The Boss Baby: Family Business review
The Boss Baby: Family Business is an endurance test. Assuming you can make it through 40 of the most obnoxious minutes possible in an animated movie, eventually you’re rewarded with a charming sequel to the 2017 original. Getting there is a major, reach for the aspirin sized challenge though.
Boss Baby hasn’t lacked for follow-ups as it’s had a TV series since 2018 and a mini movie on Netflix. This largely explains the narrative hoops returning screenwriter Michael McCullers has to take to restore the status quo.
Tim (James Marsden, The Stand) is an adult now, happily married to a loving wife (Eva Longoria), with two daughters, Tabitha (Ariana Greenblatt, Avengers: Infinity War) and baby, Tina (Amy Sedaris, The Mandalorian). Adult responsibilities has resulted in Tim not being as close to his brother — and former Boss Baby — Teddy (Alec Baldwin). Teddy still sends his love with ridiculously lavish gifts.
In a refreshing change of pace, Tim is the stay-at-home parent. He’s starting to get down as Tabitha starts showing signs of growing up too soon. There’s a reason for that as Tabitha is attending the prestigious school run by Dr. Armstrong (Jeff Goldbum), a genius with an innovative teaching technique.
But the school and Armstrong are perhaps a little too good to be true.
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Good thing being a boss baby runs in the family as Tina recruits Tim and Teddy to discover the truth of Armstrong’s school. But first, they’ve got to take a special bottle formula (naturally) to revert to their ages from the first film.
That felt a little complicated to get the sequel in line with the first This is a simplified version of the first 45 minutes, which are chaotic, noisy and hyper-edited.
Director Tom McGrath seems to take the parenting approach of throwing everything at the screen in hopes of exhausting younger viewers early on. McGrath unleashes all the yelling, explosions and general obnoxiousness before settling into a far less spastic film. Maybe after they’re over stimulated with all the early shenanigans, younger viewers can sit back and not be so resistant to the slower moments? It’s an interesting strategy.
The overall dizzying first half pace is too much and goes too long for the point of the story. There’s no way around that being a problem, but once McGrath stops pushing the overdrive button, Family Business finds its sweet side.
Now that he’s back at the same age as Tabitha, Tim can relate to her better. McCullers gets to the edge of a weird dynamic with Tabitha liking young Tim too much a la Back to the Future, but pulls back right on time.
The first film has a pleasant charm and had a decent spin on the whole new baby disrupting the older sibling’s like approach. It takes the sequel awhile to figure out the focus. Is it Tim and Teddy’s sibling squabbling? Is is Tabitha trying to fit in at school? Or is it Tina making sure her charges stay on task to complete the mission?
Ultimately, what works best is what worked before with Tim and Teddy’s bickering antics finally giving away to the deep affection between the brothers.
The Boss Baby: Family Business starts off incredibly overwhelming as if to only cater to audiences with rapid fire attention spans. Once the focus shifts from chaos to characters, it captures the lightning in the baby bottle spirit of the original film.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10
Photo Credit: Universal Pictures