Sometimes all a movie has to do is fill time. It’s a cynical viewpoint of the world’s biggest entertainment industry, but even the most artful of films will only be made if there’s a potential to make some cash. That’s not to say “The Boss Baby: Family Business” or the first film are anywhere close to art house pieces. They’re Dreamworks’s biggest and most blatantly obvious cash cows, and this sequel does little to change that perception.
The sequel finds the two brothers from the first film, Tim, voiced by James Marsden (“X-Men,” “Sonic the Hedgehog”), and Ted Jr., voiced by Alec Baldwin (“Beetlejuice,” “30 Rock”), turned from grownups back into children to sneak into a private school to discover what sinister plot it holds, lead by Tim’s daughter and secret new Boss Baby Tina, voiced by Amy Sedaris (“BoJack Horseman,” “Strangers with Candy”). The plot is basically an excuse to recreate the basic premise from the first film and in that respect it works.
It also shovels numerous new characters into this weird looking world and they all feel like textbook time-wasting material. There’s a kid who bullies Tim’s older daughter, a random creepy girl who keeps popping up throughout, a miniature Pony that hates Tim, and it all feels like blatant padding. The few new characters that do add something to the mix are Tim’s older daughter Tabitha, voiced by Ariana Greenblatt (“Love and Monsters,” “The One and Only Ivan”), the villain Dr. Armstrong, voiced with apathetic glee by Jeff Goldblum (“Jurassic Park,” “Thor: Ragnarok”), and Sedaris as the new Boss Baby, Tina.
Baldwin does a serviceable job, with nothing really changing from the first film and Marsden does good work as well. Neither stand out, but they’re perfectly fine. Greenblatt also delivers a good vocal performance, but again, nothing that will set the film apart from the pack. Meanwhile Sedaris and Goldblum are doing some really energetic and silly work. Sedaris struts her stuff, showcasing why she’s been doing voices for years, delivering some of the absurd material with gusto.
Goldblum, somehow, is delivering a performance that is both over and under-exaggerated. It's entertaining for sure, but it's hard to tell if he’s making fun of the movie by putting in no energy or if he loves the work and is therefore putting in a ton of energy in the process. It’s hard to really describe without having seen it yourself.
The exact same thing can be said for the plot. Director/co-writer Tom McGrath (“Madagascar,” “Megamind”) and co-writer Michael McCullers (“Baby Mama,” “Austin Powers in Goldmember”) have written a plot that really just exists as a sequence of loosely connected events to get from gag to gag, set piece to set piece. There’s an evil plan that doesn’t make any sense and a subplot about Tabitha and a Christmas pageant, but none of it has any sense of memorability, just going one ear and out the other accompanied by colorful visuals and energetic music.
That’s one thing the film still has in its favor; like the first, the color palette is wonderfully colorful and expressive, mixing modern aspects with a pseudo-retro-futuristic 60s kind of style. It's all bent angles, unsymmetrical squares, and shiny bright lights. It certainly gives the film a unique look, even as the events that use that look are as spastic and unmemorable as ever.
“Family Business” has an almost absurdly high sense of energy. It ratchets everything up to eleven with an almost headache inducing speed. A sequence early on that begins with a missed bus results in a destructive chase through town involving a giant snowball with the mayor and multiple cops in it and a giant flaming Christmas tree. It's one thing to bring the looney tunes sense of energy into CGI animation, but this is ridiculous.
It's a triumph in a way that despite that kind of energy the film maintains its weirdly unexciting and unmemorable pace. It definitely has its moments, but it also has its fair share of uncomfortable scenarios: it's hard to laugh at a “naked baby” joke when one of the people present in the scene is canonically the naked ones daughter/niece and while the intentions are good, a father-daughter bonding subplot is a bit too… weirdly romantic given the de-aging of the dad, Tim.
“The Boss Baby: Family Business” certainly is a sequel to the 2017 film “The Boss Baby.” It keeps up the series' high levels of anarchistic energy and unmemorability with a couple of poorly thought out bits of weird uncomfortability sprinkled in for good measure. It’s technically a better film than the first one, but that’s not a high bar to reach and can only be said because it isn’t as blatantly annoying as the 2017 film was. Is it good? Not really, but it's certainly passable and competently made. You could do far far worse. 2.5/5
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