New ‘The Boss Baby’ Trailer Riffs on ‘Beauty and the Beast’
The latest trailer for the upcoming DreamWorks film The Boss Baby — an animated comedy featuring Alec Baldwin voicing a baby who is, bear with me here, a boss — was specially cut together to be paired with Disney’s Beauty and the Beast remake, which premiered this past Friday. The video, jocularly titled “A Tale NOT As Old As Time” in reference to the line from the 1991 film’s theme music, features the Baldwin-voiced infant making Cogsworth and Lumiere play with one another before he directly accosts the audience. For a movie that would appear to be marketed to children, it sure does contain a joke about sticking a candlestick in there somewhere.
The rest of the trailer is baby business as usual, explicating the premise of a clandestine cuteness war transpiring between babies and puppies and how Baldwin’s diaper-clad dynamo is right on the front lines. Attempt to ignore the pangs of sympathy embarrassment you may feel for Baldwin as you watch him get his baby butt sniffed by an inquiring dog and resurrect his immortal line about who coffee is for from Glengarry Glen Ross.
One of the questions that the trailer leaves aggravatingly unresolved, however, is that of what the Boss Baby is supposed to be the boss of. He clearly gives off a corporate air, what with his sock garters and demands for sushi and habit of licking his thumb before peeling money rolls, but from where does he derive this authority? Truly, The Boss Baby is rich with mysteries.