Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest Luke Dunne, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT.
This time, continuing our Summer of ’99 season, Bob Clark’s Baby Geniuses.
1999 was a great year for movies, with a host of massively successful (and cult) hits that would define cinema for a next generation. It was also home to some of the very worst: Wild Wild West, Jakob the Liar, Bicentennial Man. However, one bad movie towers about all the others. The Summer of ’99 season would not be complete without folding in the only film from that year to make the IMDb‘s storied Bottom 100 list.
Underneath a skyscraper in Los Angeles, there is nestled a terrible secret. A sinister laboratory is running grotesque experiments on children, hoping to crack open the key to universal knowledge. Only one person can stop them. One of these so-called “baby geniuses”, the self-described “Sly Man”, embarks on a rip-roaring race against time to stop the sinister machinations of his evil great aunt.
At time of recording, it was ranked 23rd on the Internet Movie Database‘s list of the worst movies of all-time.
Show Notes:
- Recorded 17th July 2019.
- Baby Geniuses at The Internet Movie Database.
- The IMDB Bottom 100 as it appeared at time of recording.
- Listen to The Breakout Role Podcast on Soundcloud.
- Follow The Breakout Role Podcast on Twitter.
- Read Luke’s work at Film in Dublin.
- Follow Luke on Twitter.
- David Sims at The Atlantic on how the summer blockbuster season came to extend backwards to March, March 2017.
- Daniel Kurland at Vulture on “The Dinner Party” as an exceptional episode of Frasier, April 2015.
- Danny Bowes at Tor reflects on the casual racism of the forties Batman serials, January 2011.
- Diane Garrett at Variety offers an obituary for director Bob Clark, April 2007.
- Matthew Hays at POV offers a retrospective on the career and legacy of director Bob Clark, April 2008.
- Sam Kashner at Vanity Fair on the history of A Christmas Story, November 2016.
- Jennifer M. Wood at Mental Floss on the 24 hours of A Christmas Story marathon, December 2018.
- Jason Concepcion at The Ringer discusses the impact of Black Christmas on the history and evolution of the slasher film, October 2018.
- Patrick Sauer at The Huffington Post offers an oral history of Porky’s, December 2017.
- Paul Bullock at Medium on Steven Spielberg’s empowerment of children, June 2017.
- Ad Age discusses the controversy of advertising directly to children, September 2003.
- Duke University offers a brief introduction to the history of child-targeted advertising, May 2011.
- Martin Rosenbaum at The Independent discusses the practice of “gunging” on Nickelodeon, July 1993.
- Nell Frizzell at The Guardian looks back nostalgically on the children’s television decades past, October 2016.
- Eric Adams at The A.V. Club debates the kids-versus-adult dynamic of Home Alone, December 2012.
- Get Your Own Back presenter Dave Benson Phillips talks to The Big Issue, July 2016.
- Alex Suskind at The Daily Beast on growing up with Bart Simpson, April 2017.
- Nick Tricarico at The Odyssey on the impact of Bart Simpson on his life, August 2016.
- Ross McIndoe at Vice on the legacy and impact of South Park, September 2019.
- Jesse Collings at Wrestling Inc. looks back at “the Attitude Era” of professional wrestling, May 2019.
- Ellis Posey at The Austin Business Journal on the “rule of three” in comedies, November 1999.
- Ben Potter at Classical Wisdom offers an introduction to Plato’s theory of recollection, March 2018.
- Edward Silver at The Los Angeles Times on the spread of Buddhism through nineties Los Angeles, March 1995.
- Roger Ebert reviews Baby Geniuses at The Chicago Sun Times, March 1999.
- Desson Howe at The Washington Post notes the many director cameos nestled within Beverly Hills Cop III, May 1994.
- Peter Bart and Peter Guber discuss the inflation of nineties movie star salaries in The Guardian, May 2003.
- A.W. Hill discusses Los Angeles’ late nineties flirtation with gnosticism in L.A. Weekly, May 2005.
- Bill Higgins at The Hollywood Reporter looks back on Ally McBeal’s dancing baby, October 2017.
- Kathleen Turner talks to Vulture about her career, August 2018.
- Kathleen Turner discusses playing Chandler’s father on Friends with Digital Spy, April 2018.
- Richard Corliss at Time remembers Ruby Dee, June 2014.
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Filed under: The Bottom 100 | Tagged: attitude era, babies, baby geniuses, bottom 100, buddhism, Christopher Lloyd, comedy, creepy, kathleen turner, kid power, luke dunne, new ageism, platonic epistemology, ruby dee, sexualisation, summer of '99, uncanny valley, unfunny |
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