baby geniuses Movie Review

"Baby Geniuses" doesn't waste any time getting stupid. The first scene is a bunch of bozo Orwellian security guards being karate-chopped to a pulp by a brainiac toddler who is trying to escape the lab of an evil scientist.

The evil scientist is Christopher Lloyd, forever lit from below to make his worn-out elastic face look sinister. His evil boss is an Ivana-ized Kathleen Turner, in what has to be the most embarrassing role of her tail-spinning career, as the scenery-chewing CEO of Baby Co., a kiddie product conglomerate that is secretly experimenting on babies to discover if they know the secrets of the universe.

Don't ask.

Exactly what she plans to do with these baby geniuses when she figures out how they tick isn't quite clear, except that she wants to make a mint selling her sterile, industrial-military child-rearing techniques.

The plot revolves around twin babies Sly and Whit, one of whom is being raised in the lab (but escapes, of course) while the other grows up in the "normal" environment of an over-run day-care center operated by Turner's unsuspecting, well-adjusted niece and her child psychologist husband (Kim Catrall and Peter MacNicol).

Turner and MacNicol have competing theories about how baby talk may be a language unto itself and how kids are born knowing everything but get dumb when they turn two.

The gimmick is that we get to see this alleged omniscience in action, manifested as smart-assed voice overs given to the little ones, whose mouths sync up by way of computer effects. It's "Look Who's Talking" gone horribly, horribly wrong.

An embarrassment from start to finish "Baby Geniuses" is little more than a predictable progression of under-rehearsed and unoriginal, idiotic stock scenes age-adjusted for the baby theme, and the writing couldn't be sloppier.

Full of expository dialogue, in the movie's second scene Lloyd actually asks his computer to explain the history of his infant experiments out loud. Other spoken stinker include tyrannical Turner making the unmistakable call of the frustrated generic nefarian "You idiots! You morons! You imbeciles!" to her henchmen.

Full of ludicrous plotting, in one scene a diaper service driver actually stops by the command center of Tuner's new amusement park to see if the technicians have any dirty diapers. Why would they?

Of course, the genius twin must escape and be accidentally switched for his brother. Of course, the creepy automatons at Turner's kiddie amusement park will inevitably go on a rampage. Of course, that rampage is timed to coincide with a showdown between the babies and the baddies.

And, of course, if you've read this far and you're still not convinced this movie sucks, I'm wasting my time, so I'm done.