“Boss Baby: Family Business,” a Universal release, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America for rude humor, mild language and some action. There’s a dazzlingly animated scene shared between kid-sized Tim and his daughter Tabitha on creativity and being yourself set to Cat Stevens’ “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out.” It’s a good enough moment to redeem “Family Business,” even if you’re still tempted to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The movie’s own business imperatives occasionally show through like a leaky diaper.īut I will say, “Boss Baby” grows on you a little. It’s a manic movie in a familiarly corporate kind of way that provides kids with a computer-generated candy rush. The plot is so madcap, with running gags tossed in along the way, that “Family Business” feels designed to prompt dizzied parents to plea for plot pointers from their diminutive movie companions. The young, of course, have good reason to think they could do better with the world. Armstrong’s plot preys on parents’ addiction to smart phones. In a bit that recalls the similarly colorful but much better “The Mitchells vs. The school pageant, which Tabitha is anxiously preparing for, bluntly lays climate change at the feet of an older generation. Armstrong is cooking up a baby revolution that’s completely absurd yet not without its merits. Armstrong (Jeff Goldblum, spookily clownish) of Tabitha’s school. agent, too, and she summons Tim and Ted back to the conglomerate for a new mission - shrinking back to their ages in the last movie to go undercover and investigate the principal, Dr. The movie opens with Tim lamenting that childhood only comes once, but “Boss Baby” is a totem to the truism that adults and children aren’t really so different, and are sometimes even interchangeable. The brothers have drifted apart, while still harboring Ted’s secret that he was an agent for Baby Corp., a conglomerate that makes an adult-intelligence-giving baby formula.

Older brother Tim (James Marsden, taking over for Tobey Maguire) has grown up to be a stay-at-home dad married to the high-powered Carol (Eva Longoria), with their science-obsessed, high-achieving daughter, Tabitha (Ariana Greenblatt), and infant Tina (Amy Sedaris).īoss Baby Ted (Alec Baldwin, adding to his closet of suits, including Donald Trump, Jack Donaghy and Blake in “Glengarry Glen Ross”) has, naturally, turned into a hedge fund CEO. Director Tom McGrath (the “Madagascar” movies) returns for “The Boss Baby: Family Business” (in theaters and streaming on Peacock on Friday), and fast forwards to adulthood.

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