First body-slamming pol Greg Gianforte is elected into office, now this. Because life is unfair, “The Boss Baby” — a semi-coherent toon starring the voice of Alec Baldwin as a smart, scheming, talking toddler that wasn’t, alas, a thinly-veiled attack on our sitting president — made a ton of cash money. It made so much cash, in fact, that we’re definitely being punished with a sequel, which will maybe make some sense out of the first one — a movie that made little of it.
Yes, “The Boss Baby” — which gifted moviegoers with a brain-hurtingly complex mythology about corporate newborns who want to sabotage humanity’s love of cute dogs for some reason — somehow grossed half a billion dollars worldwide, $167 million of that domestically. That’s a mere $8 million less than “Get Out,” to put that into perspective.
This nonsensical monster is the eighth highest grossing film of 2017, between “Kong: Skull Island” and “Split” — two films that at least gave us what he came for (giant rampaging apes and M. Night Shyamalan weirdness, respectively), and didn’t waste the idea of our reigning Donald Trump impersonator voicing a tyrannical baby-person who makes life unpleasant for everyone around him.
If life couldn’t get any worse, this summer’s animated roster is lackluster as well. This year’s Pixar movie isn’t some newfangled contraption with a blindingly original idea, like “WALL-E” or “Up.” It’s “Cars 3,” a threequel to the studio’s only terrible franchise, the one with Larry the Cable Guy as one of the leads. For adults who like animation but don’t have children and don’t see these things purely to get the kids out of the house for a couple hours, this is grim news indeed.
On the other hand, not everything is bad. There’s always the possibility that Trump may be impeached. We’ll have that to look forward to, at least.
