The Boss Baby: Family Business
This fast-paced, colorful sequel knows exactly what its core audience of kiddies wants, and serves it up while treating grownups mostly as an afterthought.
I’ll give “The Boss Baby: Family Business” credit for not taking the most obvious route possible for a sequel to the 2017 animated hit.
That would have been to just bring back suit-wearing baby genius Ted Templeton (voice of Alec Baldwin) for another whacky adventure with his older brother Tim, the only one who knows he can talk and secretly is an agent for the shadowy BabyCorp company, which protects the interests of tykes. Last time they were taking on the onslaught of cute puppies, so this time it’d have been kittens or some other adorable.
Instead, they jump the story a few decades into the future in which Tim (James Marsden) is now a stay-at-home dad to two daughters while Ted is the ultra-rich CEO of a corporation who never stops working, sending “inappropriately generous” gifts in his stead, like a baby pony. Tim’s toddler, Tina (Amy Sedaris), is now a Boss Baby while his 7-year-old, Tabitha (Ariana Greenblatt), is attending a very fancy school for high-achieving kids.
True, Ted and Tim do get zapped back to their kiddie forms so they can infiltrate the school and investigate its oddball principal, Dr. Erwin Armstrong, voiced by the very odd (in a good way) Jeff Goldblum. But I liked that director Tom McGrath and screenwriter Michael McCullers keep the focus on Tim’s desire to be there for his girls, while the antagonism with his brother (mostly) takes a back seat.
There is a funny and somewhat pointed subtext about the way parents care too much about their offspring being overachievers instead of just… kids. Tabitha’s school, which is being replicated all over the country, looks like a cross between an Apple store and prep academy for 1-percenters.
Armstrong is a visionary, who looks like kooky curly-haired professor but thinks that competition between kids is always healthy. Tim is surprised to find that Tabitha, who had been pushing him away lately and eschewing “little kid” things like singing and hugs, is being bullied by some other students following Armstrong’s teachings a little too earnestly.
Of course, there’s a surprise in store with Armstrong’s ambitions extending much further than just making kids smarter, but using smartphone apps to ensorcel their parents into zombies so they don’t get in the way so much. He also isn’t all that he appears to be, or at least not most of him.
This a fast-moving, breakneck-paced movie filled with lots of action and color. There are baby ninjas and musical numbers and tunnel chases and double-crosses and so on. Ted’s gift pony turns out to be a hard-charging stallion that continually saves the day.
Frankly, it was a little too much for my middle-aged brain to take in all at once. It’s the perfect speed for kids, though, and my 7- and 10-year-olds were mightily entertained.
“Nine out of 10,” judgeth the eldest, though I’m sorry to tell DreamWorks that Rotten Tomatoes won’t let me add that in as a corollary rating.