Andre Baronov-Torres
Digital Editor
From the days of the Euthyphro to the modern poem, dialogue has expressed the inner-workings of man’s nature and the human condition. Never has humanity so blighted itself as to gloss over such a work as Dreamworks’ soon-to-be-classic “Boss Baby” (2017). Its intertextual references to such anthologies such as “Metamorphoses” and Freud’s psychoanalytic works have never been more cogent to our present-day zeitgeist.
This is an argument I have made since walking out of the cinématique a changed man. What was intended to be light-hearted fodder on a cordial date night turned into a deeply analytical frenzy of the great works of literature. Courtney, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry I left our date to start my research — my readers expect only the best quality reporting.
Book XV of the Roman mythological narrative poem “Metamorphoses” speaks of the creature known as the Phoenix, a cyclically regenerated species. No character better relates to this than the Boss Baby himself, Theodore Lindsey Templeton, masterfully portrayed by Alec Baldwin. The embodiment of a modern Greek anti-hero, Templeton goes through the angsts perhaps only thought fit for a Greek god.
He is torn between the pathos of a mortal existence with the Templeton family that provides him love and the human connection and the dichotomous logos world that he is confined to as an agent for the Baby Co., an industrial complex of baby production that competes with Puppy Co. in the market for cuteness.
If the plain parallelism that exists between Boss Baby’s adversities and the tale of Bellophron is not blatant to you by now, then perhaps this article is not for you.
The concept of cyclical rebirth has never been better demonstrated in film than through the musical techniques portrayed in this underappreciated piece of cinema. The multiple variations of the Irving Berlin classic, “Cheek to Cheek”, serves to show the variations of feeling brought in the different movements of Templeton’s quixotic quest to find his inner humanity. From the upbeat but sterilized rendition that plays when Templeton is content working at Baby Co., to the orchestrated emotionally wrenching variation that occurs when Templeton realizes a life without family is unbearable on the human psyche, to the finally upbeat ensemble performance of “Cheek to Cheek” that occurs at the end of this Greek Comedy whence the hero of the tale finally achieves his ultimate character want: humanity, love, family.
In conclusion and in summary, “Boss Baby” has something to teach us all. The power of family, of babies and the need for social integration as a means to achieving a fulfilling life are all portrayed in this Dreamworks classic.