The Boss Baby: Family Business

To think that we had to wait four years to find in the cinema the endearing universe of Maria Frazee after a very successful first part The Boss Baby (2017) and a series including four seasons currently available on Netflix, Baby boss: Back in Business (2018), Baby boss is back in the cinema to our great pleasure. We find Tom McGrath as director and Michael McCullers as scriptwriter, which allows us to find the same tone as the first part, but above all to find a way to extend the universe of Baby Boss and even to extend it in a way as original as successful.

Many years after the events of Baby boss, Tim Templeton is now an adult and a happy father of two adorable daughters, while his brother Ted, from whom he got angry, has become a very rich CEO who manages his business with iron hands to the point of remaining solitary and not having time to visit his brother and his family. As a global danger looms and a mysterious individual attempts to end the reign of the adults, Ted and Tim find themselves in a rather unexpected way when they take a magic formula that turns them back into babies for 48 hours. Working with Tim's secret agent daughter, they must go undercover to stop an evil genius from turning more toddlers into monstrous brats and changing the order on earth forever.

 (The Boss Baby: Family Business is certainly an entertainment that seems to obey the same rules as the first part with the presence of a baby in a suit who has the same behavior, the same way of expressing himself as an adult, but above all, it is a parody of spy films reminding us in many ways of the cinematographic saga of the most famous British agent with its lot of gadgets of all kinds, its scenes of muscular action, a villain who dreams of reigning over the whole world, but it is also a way of approaching childhood in an original manner. Michael McCullers' script gives a rather accurate vision of the current family with its difficulties to raise and understand its children and to inculcate them with important moral values. The idea of reversing the roles and proposing a father who raises his children while his wife has important functions and supports the family changes considerably the traditional orientation of the vision of the family in which it is the man who is at the center of the home. 

The villain of The Boss Baby: Family Business is this time the founder and principal of Tim's gifted daughter Tabitha's school and he has a host of ninja kids on his team. The fast pace of the film makes us enter directly into the story with the same pleasure as in the first part. Of course, we can reproach the film for being too calculating and offering an entertainment without real surprise compared to the first part, but we must recognize the undeniable know-how of the director Tom McGrath (the Madagascar saga) to deliver a successful animated film, full of ideas and humor and which is similar to a family entertainment. The originality is certainly one of the important assets of this animated feature.

This film deserves to be discovered in its original version, as the voice cast is excellent, including Alec Baldwin, James Marsden, Amy Sedaris, Ariana Greenblatt, Jeff Goldblum, Eva Longoria, Jimmy Kimmel and Lisa Kudrow. It is certainly Jeff Goldblum once again who makes the show by playing the big bad of the film. He seems to have a lot of fun and takes us easily in this new adventure in which baby boss and Tim will have to work as a team again and put their differences aside. The ending of the film is definitely a success and celebrates the fact that to be happy you have to balance your family life and your work.

The Boss Baby: Family Business
Directed by Tom McGrath
Screenplay by Michael McCullers
Story by Tom McGrath, Michael McCullers
Based on The Boss Baby and The Bossier Baby by Marla Frazee
Produced by Jeff Hermann
Starring Alec Baldwin, James Marsden, Amy Sedaris, Ariana Greenblatt, Jeff Goldblum, Eva Longoria, Jimmy Kimmel, Lisa Kudrow
Edited by Mary Blee, Mark A. Hester
Music by Hans Zimmer, Steve Mazzaro
Production Company : DreamWorks Animation
Distributed by : Universal Pictures 
Release date : July 2, 2021 (United States), August 18, 2021 (France)
Running time : 107 minutes

Seen on August 01, 2021 (sreener press)

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