The Boss Baby: Family Business

The Boss Baby: Family Business
Starring Alec Baldwin, James Marsden, Amy Sedaris, Jeff Goldblum
Directed by Tom McGrath

There's a saying in the business world: "a meeting that could've been an email." Basically, it means that there was a long, drawn out, oftentimes boring and incoherent meeting that the underlings have to sit through for the big bosses to reveal something that could've easily been told through email with quick, painless (and often instantly deleted) results. It's unnecessary, unwarranted, and uninspired. "The Boss Baby: Family Business" is the movie version of this saying. It was long, drawn out, boring, incoherent, unnecessary, unwarranted, and absolutely uninspired. A (too long) gestating sequel that resulted in lame, unfunny jokes that were too far above the heads of children and even farther above the heads of the poor adults who had to sit through this mess in order to appease the little ones - if even the little ones managed to get through it.

Years after the antics of the Templeton brothers, Tim (James Marsden) is now a grown-up married father of two young daughters, Tabitha (Ariana Greenblatt) and infant sister Tina (Amy Sedaris). He's living the father life, doting on his kids, and still maintains a wild sense of imagination he tries to impart on his children. Yet Tabitha is growing up and getting tired of Tim's antics, and has just been accepted into a prestigious school led by the mysterious Dr. Armstrong (Jeff Goldblum), and Tim discovers that Tina is the new executive of BabyCorp, and wants to recruit Tim and his brother Ted (Alec Baldwin), who's now a successful business executive in his own right.

Tina lures Ted back home, and introduces the two to a potion that'll revert them to their childhood ages for forty-eight hours so they can infiltrate Tabitha's school and find out what Dr. Armstrong is planning. Along the way, the two brothers - now their same ages as the first film - must learn how to work together and get past their years of indifference if they plan to succeed in stopping Dr. Armstrong's evil plan before it comes to fruition.

Even typing out the summary seemed like more than what anyone involved in the film did for the movie itself. It's an easy review to process: a wannabe soulless cash grab in hopes of pulling parents to the theater (or purchasing Peacock) to give NBC some more income by focusing on a sequel to a subpar original (and even more lackluster television series). They recycled classic double entente jokes that seem innocent when focused on babies, but adults will understand the more vulgar undertones that these stale jokes deliver. Potty humor is only funny when it's actually intelligent, and there's nothing smart to come out of this disaster.

Alec Baldwin returns to voice the original Boss Baby, and you can even tell that he doesn't care about the project just in the projection of his voice. It sounds painful in how little he cares about the integrity of his work and more about the paycheck he received. Amy Sedaris's voice as Tina is excruciating, like nails on a chalkboard. Everything she says is at a screaming level, and you'll wish you had earplugs through most of it. Likewise the entire cast sounds like they don't really care, except for the ever-amazing Jeff Goldblum, who seems to be the only one in the cast or crew to fully comprehend the inane nature of the film as a whole, and decided to go "full Goldblum" which is the only part that makes this slightly watchable.

To add insult to injury, there's musical numbers inserted into the film when Tim (as a young boy) and Tabitha get together to help Tabitha learn how to sing, and her voice turns out to be the sort that's adorable when a kid sings it, but if you really judge it by talent, you'll Simon Cowell the heck out of it. This is the part of the film that tries to highlight the importance of family and finding your own voice, but it falls as flat as the notes Tabitha tries to sing, along with the rest of the film.

Then there's the strain between Ted and Tim, as forty years of being estranged has left its mark on the brothers. Tim feels Ted abandoned the family by becoming a big executive and sending gifts for his nieces' birthdays and Christmases, and Ted feels Tim abandoned him after promising him as a child not to. In the end, you really don't care about this dynamic at all because you know how it'll all be resolved, because this isn't a Disney Pixar film - it's DreamWorks, and you can clearly tell. The animation alone is excruciating, a jumbled colorful vomitrocious mess that needs to be seen to believed - but not worthy of viewing.

Offering absolutely nothing worth of value, "The Boss Baby: Family Business" is only slightly better than a poop-filled diaper - at least you can't smell the awfulness it regurgitates onto the screen.

The Score: D-