Wednesday, March 02, 2005

The Primetime Attack of Scary Mutant Talking Babies

Listening to: Patti Smith, Horses

Note to Quiznos: food pretty, good; talking baby in commercials, hideous.

The brain trust that a few years back decided Weimaranars in yuppie gear was amusing for more than ten seconds is back, this time with "Bob" the gravelly-voiced tot hawking fast food. Never mind that Bob doesn't even look like a baby (he looks like a miniature Winston Churchill) but the message is clear, make a baby talk like an adult and the cute factor will have crappy Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches flying out the door.

Wrong. First of all, kids say things far cuter than any adult could, mostly because they're not self-conscious. What my kids say comes from sheer innocence, not from some marketing pinhead. My kids make me laugh. Bob makes me shriek with terror.

The other problem is that the technology is just not there to make talking babies convincing. The animated mouth is still little better than the talking faces on Conan O'Brien and instead of looking convincing, it's creepy. It's like somebody de-mouthed an infant and replaced its lips with robotic worms. And the "expressive eyes" are totally freaky, I can't help the director is subjecting the poor kid to foot shocks.

At this point, I feel like a "Genuine" moment of "So what creeps YOU out?" is appropriate but I'm not going to do that. I need some sleep.

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