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. But each movie has hyperactively swaddled that thin premise with a frenetic, over-plotted, off-the-wall cartoon blitz.ĭirector 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. It was a good enough conceit for Marla Frazee's original children's book toddlers can indeed be tyrants. The Dreamworks sequel to 2017's (checks notes) Oscar-nominated “The Boss Baby' again pushes a simple, funny but difficult to elaborate on image - a baby in suit - to zany extremes. But even knowing the inevitable drop-off to come, “The Boss Baby: Family Business” is still an awfully steep slide from the splendid, shimmering “Luca.”

The Walt Disney Co.'s animation studio has long been a standard bearer that can be tough to match. Pity the kids movie that follows Pixar's act.

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