Stuporbabies: Pitting the baby "geniuses" at Sony (warning: long)

The BBQ Pit
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You may be asking yourself: pitting Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2? Hasn’t it already punished itself just by existing? Yes, it has. But there’s more to the story than that.

Let me start by saying that I haven’t seen Superbabies, and don’t plan to. And I am one of the few people who could care less for the Star Wars historical-revisionism wars (although I think that Lucas should have at least shown what was changed in a DVD special feature at least, and given the fans the original versions at best). But putting two and two together, in DVD form, makes for the most unusual thing I’ve ever seen- and never seen- on a DVD.

Come with us to the local grocery store where I work, there, past the VHSs of the obscure Oliver Platt-Jerry Lewis film Funny Bones and Gerald McBoing-Boing cartoons that will probably never be sold, there it is, the new release of the day to appeal to the kiddies, smack in between Troy and Little Black Book: Superbabies! “Family Edition,” it reads on the top. Hmm, I wonder. A&P usually only sells fullscreen DVDs. Has Sony Pictures Entertainment, in their infinite wisdom, believed that widescreen DVDs are confusing to people who don’t understand those “black bars” and that children will be confused as to why the picture doesn’t take up the whole screen, thus renaming this piece of crap a “Family Edition” instead of a “Fullscreen Edition?” One look at the back of the DVD case tells us that is is fullscreen; but that’s not apparently why it garnered the name “Family Edition”. Look at the bottom, and there you’ll see the following notice:

Not only that, but Sony does not offer either a widescreen or unedited version!

I realize it’s stupid to pit such a stupid film as Superbabies, which based on the tralier, deserves to be forgotten by the moviegoing public. But the thoughts about this are stupifying?

Why bowdlerize a film anyway? No, the question is, why bowdlerize Superbabies? Isn’t the film dumb enough? What sort of content is there in Superbabies that young ones shouldn’t be seeing? The MPAA says there’s “action violence and some rude humor,” and all Sony says is that chapters 21 and 22 are edited. Why not edit the entire film so all that’s left are the titles and the credits? That would be much better.

But again, why edit at all? Did parents complain about the content of this film? If you want to be so family-friendly, why single Superbabies out? Why not make “Family Editions” of other films, like Laurence of Arabia or Spider-Man or Gigli? (Okay, maybe not Gigli.) To quote a cat from an old Looney Tunes short (yeah, I know Sony doesn’t make Looney Tunes, but I’ve never seen a Fox and the Crow cartoon), it just don’t add up!

Edited…Superbabies. Edited Superbabies. Isn’t that some sort of oxymoron?

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For the love of God, please don’t give them any ideas.

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Yes, they are. And then they call me, the Blockbuster employee, and ask if their DVD is “broken”.

:smack:

I hate people who can’t appreciate widescreen. I can’t help myself, I get customers who refuse to watch films in widescreen, and I just write them off, right then and there. When I worked at Subway, I felt the same inexplicable rage towards people who wanted their bread cut “the old way”.

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But the old way was like a trench for a little sandwich-sized subway! It gave heft and meaning to the entire franchise. The product was a visual metaphor for the name! Brilliant!

The new way of cutting the bread gives lie to all that. The chain is still called Subway, but the sandwiches no longer in any way resemble a subterranean railroad. This is the suck!

It would be like going into Burger King and discovering they don’t make burgers anymore! Then why is it still called Burger King? Or going into MacDonalds and … okay … well the analogy breaks down, but you get what I’m saying, right? RIGHT?

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Anyone know what the edits are?

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Can’t you see that it doesn’t matter what the edits are but the very idea that they would edit the movie at all? And this is just the first step, the foot in the door, the camel’s nose under the tent, the elephant in the room! (wait–that last one…never mind)

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You’re looking for someone who saw this movie at the theater, and purchased it for their home collection?

I’m consistently amazed at the broad range of tastes SDMB members have displayed, but I think we may finally found a stumper. :eek:

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I liked the old way. Shit didn’t fall out of my sandwich when it was cut the old way.

I never ask for it, because I’d feel too high maintenance, but damnit, I miss the old way!

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Hmmm… the Sony website is fairly cryptic, saying only that the film “…has been slightly edited for content from its original theatrical release. These changes occur in menu chapters 21 and 22.”

Remarkably, no amount of Google or GooJa searches turn up any commentary on what the actual changes are. We may have actually discovered a unique specimen – a movie so utterly without merit that not even a single internet critic gives a damn about the minutiae concerning changes to the DVD release, even when the distributors did their best to call attention to it.

Shocking.

Chapter 21 and 22 would probably be pretty late in the film. It’s just possible that the theatrical release contained a double-penetration scene and a lengthy mopping up of santorum which escaped the notice of the handful of people who stuck it out that long.

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If anyone on the entire planet buys this apparently godforsaken stain in the history of filmmaking, I would like to meet them so I can personally laugh at them so long and so hard that it makes them cry.

I mean, come on, no critic that I’m aware of anywhere had anything positive to say about this piece of garbage and yet, while there’s an endless list of great films that have yet to be remastered and made available on DVD, somehow, this movie which should have been aborted long before a script was sent to the first actor, comes out on DVD to the delight of, what will obviously amount to billions of people across the country, eager to throw their money into the garbage can called Sony Pictures. Maybe, if we’re lucky, Sony will release say three or four different special editions: widescreen; widescreen with an extra DVD of “bonus” garbage; and some sort of edition with special packaging that explodes in your face upon opening causing grevious bodily harm.

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It was a dog.

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While I haven’t worked directly with Sony Pictures, I’ve worked closely with enough of their divisions to know that at Sony, there’s always room for more stupid.

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I’m confused; what’s wrong with that? I always had trouble when I had stuff piled on cause it kept slipping out. The 3/4 cut solves that problem. I hardly think that’s comparable to not showing the whole movie.

Anyway, I know Baby Geniuses 1 sucked, simply because I could feel its evil. Baby G2 was a spawn of SATAN himself judging from the trailer they keep showing.

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At my paper, we actually had a student who stopped by one day wanting to contribute film reviews, and one of the films he wanted to review was, as he put it, “Baby Geniuses 2. You know, the sequel to Baby Geniuses 1.”

Shockingly enough, we declined to accept his contributions.

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Both the original and the sequel got a 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s ZERO positive reviews out of 59 total.

That’s all I, for one, need to know about the movie. So, what’s the deal with this old cutting vs. new cutting at Subway? How many ways can there be to cut a sandwich roll?

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They used to cut a V-shaped trench down top of the sandwich, making a nice cradle for the toppings.

Now they slice the bread horizontally, and everything falls out.

I liked the old way better, too.

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Lookie here

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IMDb has an “alternate versions” link on some of its movie pages, so I thought I might be able to find out there what the changes were, but there was no such link for Superbabies. I searched Amazon, but couldn’t get any info there, either. So, I have nothing useful to contribute to this thread, except the Amazon description of the movie (bolding mine):

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:eek:

You mean this was a corporate sactioned decision? I thought the slack-jawed yokel at the Subway on IN-30 just didn’t have the manual dexterity to cut it the right way.

I like the old cut better too. As others have said, less stuff fell out. And one of the joys of Subway is the sheer amount of stuff on the sandwhich. Or on my lap, with the new method.

I agree with you about widescreen, though. I used to keep a little picture comparison I clipped out of an industry mag taped to the front counter. It showed DaVinci’s “The Last Supper” as Widescreen and Pan and Scan (the old name for “Fullscreen”). With Pan and Scan, you lose 2 1/2 disciples.
Per the OP, while I’m only guessing, the edits may have been to fix the creativity of some pissed-off employee. Disney recalled all The Little Mermaid when parent groups pointed out the giant penises on the cover and in the film - they made the turrets of the castle. (Legend has it that they were drawn in by an employee who was told it was the last Disney project he’d be working on. Further legend has it that he now works for Dreamworks. )The re-issue had newly designed turrets. They also recalled an old series of cartoons called something like Clock Watchers, because people thought Donald Duck was saying “Fuck.” They recalled The Black Cauldron with no reason given whatsoever, and even purged it from their movie listings for over 15 years before finally re-releasing it not long ago. It was a very, very strange denial of a movie.

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Sheer Brilliance.