The Boss Baby: Family Business review

THE BOSS BABY: FAMILY BUSINESS: 

THIS “BABY” IS MOSTLY HARMLESS FAMILY ENTERTAINMENT, BUT COMPLETELY INSANE WHEN NECESSARY! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: ** ½ out of 4

UNIVERSAL PICTURES AND DREAMWORKS ANIMATION

Ted and Tina in The Boss Baby: Family Business

 

            Well…I think this movie may have broken me! 

            Alec Baldwin (The Hunt for Red October, 30 Rock, Mission: Impossible franchise) is a baby again in The Boss Baby: Family Business, the latest film from DreamWorks Animation and follow-up to 2017’s The Boss Baby. I remembered seeing the trailer for the first film before Trolls (Another DreamWorks film) and was in complete denial of what I had just seen, the studio that gave us such acclaimed classics as Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, and How to Train Your Dragon is now making a movie where Alec Baldwin is a baby? FAIL!

            It looked like it was going to be the worst thing ever to come out of animation cinema (And this was only a few months before we got The Emoji Movie!), so I came in with extremely low expectations and…acknowledged I saw it once the film ended. The first Boss Baby wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, but it was still a huge step down from DreamWorks’ other films nor was it a movie worth watching repeatedly or remembering, it was a cute but instantly forgettable animated film. 

            Now, we have the sequel, The Boss Baby: Family Business because out of all the movies for DreamWorks to make a sequel to, Boss Baby is the top priority. Why not do Captain Underpants 2 or I don’t know, a sequel to a movie that actually deserves a follow-up? It’s baffling to me! 

            Like when I saw the first film, I came in with very low expectations (Possibly even lower than when the first movie came out) and again, it wasn’t the giant dumpster fire I thought it was going to be. It’s a mostly harmless kids’ movie that has colorful animation and sparks of imagination, but what you don’t realize is that this movie is also completely bonkers! I’m not kidding, which made it very entertaining in that regard. 

            At first you think it’s going to be a pretty standard animated film like the first one, but when you add in a crazy Jeff Goldblum (Jurassic Park 1 and 2/Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, Independence Day 1 and 2, Thor: Ragnarok)-voiced baby bad guy in a robot adult body, some very unusual babies (One of which is absolutely terrifying and obsessed with ponies!), and zombified parents, it becomes a chaotic and insane fever dream that by the end it’ll make you throw up your arms and say “What did I just watch?” and then snicker at the imagery you had just witnessed. 

            The film follows Ted (voiced by Baldwin) and Tim (voiced by James Marsden-X-Men franchise, Enchanted,Sonic the Hedgehog, replacing Tobey Maguire and Miles Bakshi from the first film) Templeton, now all grown up with Ted as a very rich and successful CEO and his older brother, Tim is now a father providing for his own family. Things get really strange when Tim and Ted discover that Tim’s youngest daughter, Tina (voiced by Amy Sedaris-Elf, Shrek the Third, Puss in Boots) can talk fluently and is the new undercover secret agent of BabyCorp (Because Like Brother, like…Daughter?) who turns Ted back into a baby and Tim into a little kid again, and enlists their help in thwarting the plans of an evil genius known as Dr. Erwin Armstrong (voiced by Goldblum) who plots to turn toddlers into a monstrous brats through the most evil and diabolical way possible…SCHOOL! AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

            The film also features the voices of newcomer, Ariana Greenblatt as Tim’s highly intelligent daughter, Tabitha Templeton, Eva Longoria (Desperate Housewives, Arthur Christmas, Dora and the Lost City of Gold) as Tim’s wife, Carol, Jimmy Kimmel (Jimmy Kimmel Live, Road Trip, Teen Titans Go! To the Movies) as Tim and Ted’s father, Ted Templeton Sr., and Lisa Kudrow (Friends, Analyze This, Booksmart) as Tim and Ted’s mother, Janice. 

            Overall, The Boss Baby: Family Business is a perfectly serviceable family film, but an even better drug fantasy minus the drugs…and I don’t mean that in a bad way. You got the evil Jeff Goldblum villain character in a robot body and the zombified parents who are mind controlled through an app, but then you get to things like the design of Armstrong’s school looking like something out of dystopian sci-fi film and the classroom’s time-out area being like a psychological torture chamber which is so bizarre and creative that it’s downright ingenious, this is basically what Baby Geniuses would have been like if it was made by smart people who knew what they were doing. 

            It still isn’t a great film, but I can definitely commend the animators and creators for thinking more outside of the box with these ideas and giving us something ridiculously entertaining, whether it was intentional or not. That’s really bad when I’m speaking more positively about a Boss Baby sequel over a Spirit sequel, it just shows how little of an impression DreamWorks’ Spirit Untamed had on me, at least this movie went for broke and gave us something strange and bizarre whereas Spirit Untamed was the most nothing DreamWorks film I had ever seen. 

            The Boss Baby: Family Business should entertain your kids and will definitely entertain those looking for a completely insane and trippy fever dream of an animated film to enjoy with alcohol and/or substances that may or may not be legal wherever they’re from. This is what happens when the boy fishing on the moon has a full-frontal lobotomy, and we thank him for the chaos that comes with it. 

            It’s no Rugrats, but close enough.