The Boss Baby: Family Business movie review – Alec Baldwin’s spinoff is a useless, mind-numbing experience best forgotten

1.5/5

Story: When Tina uncovers Dr Armstrong’s evil motives that endanger her elder sister Tabitha, the infant decides to take the help of her father Tim and uncle Ted, the original Boss Baby. 

Tim and Ted are then duped into the plan when Tina feeds them a concoction that reverts their age and turns them into toddlers immediately. Will babies Tim and Ted be enough to stop Armstrong?

Review: When The Boss Baby released in 2017, many thought the idea was slightly disconcerting. Seeing an infant decked up in a tuxedo and mouthing precocious dialogues while Alec Baldwin hammed his way till the end (drawing major inspiration from Donald Trump), brought little joy to audiences. 

It’s rather surprising then, that the makers took four years to concoct a sequel to something which was already bad. The Boss Baby: Family Business deserves little attention, much like what the film’s creative team extended to its script.

Siblings Tim and Ted Templeton (James Marsden and Baldwin) are now all grown up. While elder brother Tim is a stay-at-home father to two daughters, infant Tina (Amy Sedaris) and Tabitha (Ariana Greenblatt), Ted has actually metamorphosed into this corporate honcho who is all about the spreadsheets and not returning home for Christmas as he hardly has the time.

The plot takes a bizarre turn when Tina confesses that she belongs to the same “Baby Corp” that her uncle Ted belonged to. Their current mission is to save a parent-upending school led by a vicious pedagogue Dr Erwin Armstrong (Jeff Goldblum). 

And thus, the child somehow tricks the hedge-fund king Ted to come over to their house, where she administers a secret potion to the two brothers that revert them into infants again. Baby-ed and diaper-ed the two are now ready to attend to her clarion call for help.

The excruciatingly lazy writing is sure to make viewers feel completely alienated, so much so that, they may even question the crew’s impetus in making an entire movie based on a premise that wasn’t the most attractive.

For example, Tina’s ploy for luring Ted into her father’s den was the exact same cassette-deck trick that Tim used in The Boss Baby. There’s very little excuse when it comes to such glaring loopholes. 

Other gaping discrepancies in the plot include the lack of any substantial justification for what transpires on-screen. What is the main motivation behind the baby corporation; why has Goldblum’s character got his claws all over a school when all his plan requires is high-functioning internet; why does Tina take a backseat when it comes to any actual action, instead choosing to showcase two men, who have already had their moment under the sun? These questions are never alluded to, let alone get answered.

Director Tom McGrath hardly scratches the surface in terms of logic and good story building. His and his team’s efforts feel contrived and frankly a tad too on-the-nose for audiences to feel any fleeting moment of genuine humour.

The tempo and pace of the sequel seem to have been pumped up in hopes that it gives the narrative the much-needed zany chaos. But unfortunately, the experiment falls flat on its face. The story’s paper-thin plot and half-baked characters make up for a dull watch, much like Baldwin’s Boss Baby droning about how he cannot ‘waste time’ spending it with family. You honestly question your choice of selecting this film to entertain the select few grey cells that dare to exist in the crazy that is around us.

Verdict: The Boss Baby: Family Business is a mistake that you realise you’ve made but somehow are too deep in it, to retract. It’s the opposite of a feel-good movie, in that, it hurls you towards that bitter aftertaste after a bad round of stale cake.