**An elegant and well-made film, but with far-fetched, forced ideas and a certain lack of “soul”.**
I am aware that my generation, “Generation Y”, is the first in the history of my country where the majority of us are only children. With the increase in education, health and food costs and low salaries without corresponding increases, for most families it has become insane to have more than one child. And the truth is that many of us will prefer not to have children, or we will become parents late (I think this helps explain the issue of “love for puppy dogs”, in the film and in real life, after all they're cheaper and aren't indelible bonds that connect us to others, ex-wives or ex-husbands). I can speak for myself: I'm close to forty years old, and I have no idea of starting a family, I have no conditions and I feel that my future has been mortgaged by the financial crises that society has been experiencing since the beginning of the millennium. I'm sure I won't be the only one who feels this way.
This film, in a joyful and naive way, is a portrait of all this by showing how a seven-year-old child finds the birth of his brother strange. I already understood that love and rivalry are contradictory feelings that are part of what it means to have siblings: they may compete for their parents' love and attention, but they often come together when necessary. And the film shows us all this by creating a whirlwind story in which the new member of the family is also a disguised executive with authoritarian tics and who behaves like a “Donald Trump in diapers”: giving orders, grumbling, shouting, firing everything and everyone like the worst CEO we can imagine.
To be honest, I only saw the film now because, at the time, it seemed so uninteresting and forced that I didn't pay to see it in the cinema, contradicting the success it had at the box office and joining me with a mass of suspicious people who thought that the critics could have been right in the way she bombed the film in the media. And, in fact, we have to agree that DreamWorks has already done better things and seems to be in an inspiration crisis. The quality of the drawings and animations, the vibrant colors, the good character design and the technical refinement are still visible, but there is a lack of good ideas and some soul. This film makes an effort, appeals to fraternal feelings and the public apparently responded well, but it is not a film at the level of past successes. As for the soundtrack, which features some notable songs, it's reasonable, but not so good as to be worth it on its own, and the humor is suitably sarcastic, although the jokes can, at times, be more aimed at adults than children. (I doubt most kids know what a memo is).
The film, being an animation, does not have a cast, but features the participation of several well-known voice actors, with particular emphasis on Allec Baldwin (who gave the voice of Baby) and Steve Buscemi, who gave the voice of the story's villain. Still worthy of mention and a positive note are the contributions of Jimmy Kimmel, Lisa Kudrow and Miles Bakshi.
Well here we don't even bother with the gooseberry bush, let along the maternity ward, as the young besuited baby arrives to join mum, dad and elder brother "Tim". These kids don't exactly hit it off. Is that because "Tim" is jealous of the love his parents smother their new arrival with? Or is it because he doesn't behave like a baby at all, just a diminutive business executive who speaks and acts like someone forty times his age? At his most confused, "Tim" also discovers that this rugrat has a more sinister objective and that the boss of the global megacorp "Puppy Co." has instigated a plan that will forever change the loving dynamic between people and their favourite pets. It seems that the only chance he has to thwart this dastardly plan is to work together with his duplicitous and bossy but incredibly astute sibling. Loads of escapades now follow as the pair have to do some intrepid detective work, risk life and limb, and even join an Elvis impersonators convention. Now had they just left the scenario with a degree of obnoxious baby menace, then this might have worked better for me. Sadly, though, they hadn't the courage of the original conviction of the film and so it drifts all too readily into a cheesy world of sentiment and predictability that neuters the whole thrust of the thing. It does take a bit of a pop at the corporate world and at it's approach to monetising children and pets so shamelessly, but the fun is sucked out of it simply by relying on a mediocre script and a soundtrack of adapted ballads whilst the sense of mischief just peters away. It all just goes too goo goo ga ga in the end, and though I get I'm not the demographic, I still thought it an opportunity for something a bit different just wasted.
