Baby Geniuses (1999)

[lame_username 4]

Baby Geniuses (1999)

 

Trailer:

 

Baby Geniuses hit theaters in 1999 and holds a 2% rating on Rotten Tomatoes with audiences giving it an average of 1.9 stars (and, frankly, that seems high to me.) Critics describing it as "worse than the premise suggests" and "about as endearing as unanesthetized gum surgery." Baby Geniuses won a "Worst Director" award and was nominated for "worst picture", "most painfully unfunny comedy", "worst child performer", and "least 'special' special effects."

 

In the movie, babies are born knowing the secrets of the universe. Their baby babbling is actually highly intelligent conversation that only babies can understand. Once a baby reaches a certain age they "cross-over" and become "one of us." The main antagonist is Dr. Kinder, who runs a secret laboratory where she studies the baby geniuses to order to crack the secret baby code. The storyline centers around one of the babies who escapes from the lab and must galvanize the other babies in the outside world to storm the research facility and rescue the other baby geniuses. I have to admit, nothing quite beats watching a baby, who can barely walk, take down a grown man with his baby karate moves.

 

Actors in the movie include: Kathleen Turner, Christopher Lloyd, Kim Cattrall (aka Samantha from Sex in the City), and Peter MacNicol. Directed by Bob Clark

 

I saw this in theaters when I was about 9 years old. I loved it so much that I convinced my mother to take me to it a second time. I watched it recently as an adult and I now hope to dedicate my life to building a time machine so I can go back in time and punch my 9 year old self in the mouth for having such horrible taste in movies and forcing my poor mother to see this turd of a movie not once but twice.

[SlidePocket 707]

How is this not discussed enough? This caused Kathleen Turner's movie career to be sealed shut for good although there were a few that marked the beginning of the end before that (V.I. Warshawski, Undercover Blues, Moonlight and Valentino, A Simple Wish). And it somehow spawned a franchise!

[NathanGordon 1096]

Kathleen Turner's career had already taken a dive by this time due to Hollywood wanting nothing to do with women over 40, but also her struggles with alcoholism. That stuff really catches up with you -- she was a mess and it's not surprising she was in dreck like this.

 

The story of the production of this would be interesting, I think.

[Podcaster 5]

My local newspaper reviewed this when it came out - 0 stars out of 4, which only came up for bona fide cinematic garbage.

[ZacMiller 5]

This movie was brilliant (Zouks voice)

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

I would really like to hear Paul and June discuss what they would do if one of their babies ended up a baby genius

[NathanJoel 10]

Like the OP I watched this as a child and loved it. I'm scared to go back and watch it again.

[CaptainAmazing 127]

Bump because this is the worst movie I've ever seen. Saw it about age 12 and knew it was terrible then.

 

I'm forever flabbergasted by how it lost so much money and did so badly, but still got a sequel. (Just saw something about home video sales?) Then after that one did even worse, whoever was behind it got a few episodes of a TV show made, without getting it picked up.

 

I guess I'm not surprised at all that they've made a bunch more direct-to-DVD movies. Also the Second Opinions would be amazing. The IMDB reviews for the later sequels have people giving it 10/10 and insisting things like the critics were literally bribed by the studios to give it bad reviews in order to help other movies somehow.

[Elektra Boogaloo 3371]

I want to bump this up because Paul Rudd was on Conan's podcast and they talked about how Rudd always shows a clip from "Mac and Me" when he's on Conan. He mentioned the other option was "Baby Geniuses" and it made me want to see it.

Rudd approved!

[Ofcoursemyhorse 1043]

I have to say that the Look Who's Talking movies made the smarter decision to not give a shit about trying to make the babies mouths move to match their speech. Because it is really fucking jarring in this movie.