Baby Geniuses (1999)

2% of critics liked it
(44 reviews)
32% of users liked it
(80,679 ratings)

Dr. Elena Kinder (Kathleen Turner) is the highly visible chief executive of BABYCO, the world's largest manufacturer of baby products. The company funds orphanages across the world and just opened an indoor theme park for children adjacent to its corporate headquarters in Los Angeles. Unbeknownst to… More Dr. Elena Kinder (Kathleen Turner) is the highly visible chief executive of BABYCO, the world's largest manufacturer of baby products. The company funds orphanages across the world and just opened an indoor theme park for children adjacent to its corporate headquarters in Los Angeles. Unbeknownst to the public, Kinder, with the help of Dr. Heep (Christopher Lloyd), has been conducting a vast research program devoted to decrypting in secret labs deep beneath BABYCO's corporate campus the language that babies speak. It's said that Tibetans believe all babies are born with complete knowledge of the universe and the ability to speak to each other in an ancient language. However, once infants turn two years old, they lose this knowledge as they bond more closely with adults. To study this theory, Dr. Kinder has culled the smartest babies from her orphanages to be raised in a special development program in her private lab. As a test of developmental progress, she has separated a pair of twins, Sly and Witt. While Sly is raised within the lab, Witt has been adopted by Kinder's niece, Robin Bobbins (Kim Cattrall) and her husband Dan (Peter MacNicol), who run an old-fashioned day care and child research center. Sly manages to escape the center and finds his way to a shopping mall during Christmas. While eluding Kinder's henchmen, Sly stumbles across Witt; Witt is promptly mistaken for Sly and taken away, while Sly goes to the day care center with his new mother. The two boys, who develop an empathic link, must find each other and free the children from the research center before Dr. Kinder can smuggle them out of the country. ~ Ron Wells, Rovi

Play Trailer

Rating, Runtime: PG, 1 hr. 34 min.
Directed By: Bob Clark (III)
Genres: Drama, Kids & Family, Comedy

In Theaters: Mar 12, 1999 Wide
On DVD: Jul 27, 1999
Studio: TriStar Pictures

Critic Reviews

Lael Loewenstein, Variety
A thoroughly misguided, unfunny film.
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
The hokey dialogue and witless physical gags keep everything painful and hectoring.
Jeff Millar, Houston Chronicle
If the remainder of this century will bring a lamer film than Baby Geniuses, may I please be in Estonia when it comes.
Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail
The movie is about as endearing as unanesthetized gum surgery.
Peter Stack, San Francisco Chronicle
The film has a freak-show quality.
Janet Maslin, New York Times
One way to get through Baby Geniuses is to think about whether it really is the worst movie you've ever seen. Probably not, but pretty darn close.
Scott G. Mignola, Common Sense Media
A bad sit-com of a movie.
Michael Dequina, TheMovieReport.com
One completely unwatchable piece of bottom-feeding dreck.
F.X. Feeney, L.A. Weekly
There are ticklish moments, but no real laughs.
Nathan Rabin, AV Club
Baby Geniuses' ramshackle plot serves merely as a launching pad for nearly two hours of jokes revolving around the idea of babies who talk and behave like bad stand-up comedians.
Sandra Contreras, TV Guide's Movie Guide
Formulaic and deeply unfunny.
David Noh, Film Journal International
You can feel your brain rotting as you watch this.
Frank Ochieng, Movie Eye
A kiddie comedy that's about as entertaining as treating diaper rash
Oz, Hollywood Bitchslap
I'm still clawing out my eyes.
John R. McEwen, Film Quips Online
Thanks to computers, we have seen some dazzling special effects in films lately, but even the best medicines can have unwanted side effects.
Gerry Shamray, Sun Newspapers of Cleveland
Clark has made several terrific films, this is not one of them.

Read all 16 critic reviews

Critic ratings and reviews powered by RottenTomatoes.com

Fresh (60% or more critics rated the movie positively)

Rotten (59% or fewer critics rated the movie positively)

Featured Audience Ratings

Lucas M

Terrible! The worst of could be in the filmography of Bob Clark. A low point in Christopher Lloyd carrer.
Conner R

Without a doubt, this is one of the worst movies to have ever been made. To see Bob Clark's sanity decline over the years has been tragic to say the least, but this really puts him in a irreparable spot. When you take into account that he started with Black Christmas, this is… More
Without a doubt, this is one of the worst movies to have ever been made. To see Bob Clark's sanity decline over the years has been tragic to say the least, but this really puts him in a irreparable spot. When you take into account that he started with Black Christmas, this is even worse. There is nothing more annoying and overdone than talking babies. This has that and a plot revolving around intelligent talking babies. There is nothing, nothing redeeming about this movie. You can't even bask in the terrible nature of it because it is so alienating and humiliating.
KJ P

I think I am the person in the world who may like this more than anyone, because every single person I ask despises this film, but I look at all the good things that could have been changed to make it good! In the end I laughed a few times, but never hated it!
Jason O

"Baby Geniuses" is one of the biggest disappointments ever. From the previews, I thought "Baby Geniuses" was gonna be hilarious. But I was wrong. Only a couple of parts in the movie even made me grin. A relentless scientist (Kathleen Turner) keeps babies in order… More
"Baby Geniuses" is one of the biggest disappointments ever. From the previews, I thought "Baby Geniuses" was gonna be hilarious. But I was wrong. Only a couple of parts in the movie even made me grin. A relentless scientist (Kathleen Turner) keeps babies in order to do research on them. She wants to make it to where every baby from that point on will be a genius. Trouble arises when her smartest baby, Sly, gets away. Sly has a twin named Whit. Some of Kathleen Turner's employees kidnap Whit because they think it's Sly. Whit's father (Peter MacNicol) must try to understand what his daughter and Sly are trying to tell him in order to get Whit back. "Baby Geniuses" was a big disappointment. I was expecting it to be funny and entertaining. You would expect a movie that has talking babies and even a baby that can do karate to be hilarious, but not in this case. The only reason I gave it two stars instead of one is because it halfway kept me entertained. It's not the worst movie ever made, but it's one of the worst of the year. If you want to see a funny movie that features talking babies, I would recommend sticking with the "Look Who's Talking" series. NOTE: That was my Amazon review from the year 2000. Can't believe they actually made a sequel to this terrible clunker...why would they?
Dean M

So incoherent, irresponsible "comedy" does the same thing by turning a group of aborable toddlers into a bunch of miniature potty-mouthed adults.
Megan S

I know this movie was bad...but it really amused me.
Kalel J

An exercise in torture; avoid at all costs. This rivals the pain and cringe factor of the latest torture methods of the recent James Bond film. An exaggeration? If you answered yes to that question, then you haven't been subjected to the travesty that is this film.
Leigh R

So funny!
Yinalí R

Cool movie.
a b

Who gets paid for ideas like this?
Andrew F

It is truly a terrible, terrible movie. Whoever came up with this idea for a "movie" should be fired immediately.
Kevin L

This is one of the worst movies I have ever seen! Having said that, I didn?t hate it. I mean there are some funny moments. Most of the time I was laughing at the movie, not with it. The acting is so horrific, so laughable. I really question the career move by Christopher Lloyd, here… More
This is one of the worst movies I have ever seen! Having said that, I didn?t hate it. I mean there are some funny moments. Most of the time I was laughing at the movie, not with it. The acting is so horrific, so laughable. I really question the career move by Christopher Lloyd, here we have a solid comedic actor, just what the hell was he thinking. He doesn?t even get that much scream time. Perhaps the most shocking thing about this movie was who directed it. One would have thought that the director of this piece of shit film was a amateur. Well, that?s not the case, this movie was directed by Bob Clark. Yeah that?s right the director of A Christmas Story and Porky?s!! What the fuck was he thinking directing this?! I just don?t understand how he could do this to his career. He must have been desperate for the money? Another bad thing about this film was the effects, they were God-awful! I mean come on the mouth movements on the babies looked so fake. And the way the baby danced in one scene was one of the worst things I have seen on screen in recent years. However I cant understand why the effects were so bad, nobody wanted to work on this, at least the smart ones. Lame story, awful acting cheesy effects and an average cast makes this one of the worst movies ever made!
Sunil J

I did enjoy this movie for the most part when I first saw it but I think it's best that I don't watch it again.
Leo L

Cute!