- Allegedly Optimistic Ending: A comparatively benign example but still present. Presuming the "Kinder Method" does result in the children proving more intelligent as they grow older and their early education by BabyCo begins to manifest, then in about five years Sly will start to prove himself demonstrably smarter than Whit, vindicating everything Elena has done. The Infodump in the opening scenes even states this is exactly what will happen.
- Bile Fascination: Most people who watch these movies do so because of the negative reception they have gotten.
- Nightmare Fuel: The animatronic mascots. Including a Monster Clown with a try of wind-up dentures, and a monstrous giant shaped like a baby, with voice of Satan himself. That's to say nothing of how the first film's shoddy attempts to composite a toddler's head over the face of their stunt doubles. Even the way their mouths move is unnerving. This might have been the the Intended Audience Reaction, however.
- Retroactive Recognition: Justin Chatwin in Baby Geniuses 2.
- Sequelitis: The second film performed worse than the first both critically and financially, and is considered one of the worst movies ever made. To add insult to injury, the direct-to-video series has continued in spite of the poor reputation of both films.
- Special Effect Failure:
- The special effects for the films are terrible. First, there's the method of making the babies' antics look convincing, by poorly Photoshopping baby faces over the bodies of little people (especially obvious during the dance scene), in addition to the disturbing Synchro-Vox-esque process used to superimpose CGI lipsync onto the babies faces. Also, one scene in which Sly backflips several times in front of the parents of his identical twin brother, you can easily tell it's a little person stuntman because of the height difference.
- While they do pass them off as robots in the film, the performances and costume work for the animatronic characters are very low budget, even by the movie's standards (and betraying the fact that these are supposed to be multi-million dollar robots). Baby Bunting in particular dips into the Unintentional Uncanny Valley with the weightless movements of his suit performer and inexpressive, borderline inoperable face.
- In Baby Geniuses 2 in particular, Kahuna has some stunts where it's very obvious he's on a wire and/or replaced with a stunt double.
- Spiritual Adaptation: The films can be considered the closest thing to a live-action adaptation of Rugrats.
- Squick: Bill Biscane of the sequel is revealed to be the MUCH older brother of the forever young Kahuna. It Makes Just as Much Sense in Context.
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: A crux of the film's premise is that we're born with great knowledge that we lose when we learn to talk. A scene showing off the "baby geniuses" has one of them writing in a dead language, implying that their intelligence is not merely a capability, but they actually know things that they could not possibly have learned from the world around them. This has massive implications not just for science and biology, but philosophy as well. How are we born knowing these things? Why do we forget them upon learning to talk? Could we somehow remember this stuff as adults? What secrets of the universe and the world may babies know that humanity is centuries from discovering? The film never answers those questions — aside from the dead language mentioned, the babies only seem to be "geniuses" to the extent that they possess learning and comprehension skills comparable to older children or adults, not that they possess any innate knowledge they couldn't have acquired normally. At the end of the film, Dan asks his daughter Carrie such questions, but she refuses to answer because The World Is Not Ready.
- Took the Bad Film Seriously: Jon Voight in the sequel. One could've easily thought that he would just go Ham and Cheese in this kind of film, but he's the only one not delivering his lines in monotone and attempted to make his character actually expressive. Considering that Voight was an executive producer for the first film and kept playing roles in all the direct-to-video sequels, he seems to have an odd amount of faith in the franchise.
- Uncertain Audience: One has to wonder what audience a film series such as this was meant for. It's simply too juvenile for adults, and far too dull and stupid for most kids, who didn't relate to the "talking" toddlers onscreen because of their unconvincing behaviour. The first film also features a weirdly large amount of Demographically Inappropriate Humor, such as sexual innuendos and mild swearing.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ymmv/BabyGeniuses
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