At first, you’re led to think (hope?) that the film’s downsized tyke-in-chief may be the product of Tim’s overactive imagination. until its satiric edge is dulled by 10-gags-a-minute pacing and goo-goo gaga gooeyness. (didn’t last year’s flightless Storks cover this same ground?) and Puppy Co. Loosely based on a 2010 children’s book illustrated by Maria Frazee, the film takes a tummy-tickling concept – the literal infantilization of selfish and demanding adult behavior – and attaches fantastic plot threads involving the secret machinations of mega-companies like Baby Corp.
(Of course, Michael Douglas never wore a diaper.) This retro-vibed DreamWorks feature (is that a TV dinner?) about a 7-year-old boy named Tim, grappling with the loss of his only-child status upon the unwelcome arrival of a baby brother, is like so many other high-concept, computer-animated comedies these days: clever, funny, and inventive, but lacking in an emotionally accessible storyline. His big brother Tim (James Marsden) is now a stay-at-home dad with two daughters – and the single flicker of human interest here is Tim’s heartbreak at his preteen Tabitha (Ariana Greenblatt) growing apart from him.Imagine Wall Street corporate hotshot Gordon Gekko merging with toddler Stewie Griffin in The Family Guy and you have The Boss Baby, right down to the briefcase, Rolex watch, and black sock garters. He’s got no time for family – “I can’t do Christmas on the 25th” he says, one of a handful of decent lines snuck in for adults. The Boss Baby 2 is set a few decades later: little Ted (Baldwin), the double-espresso-drinking boss baby, is all grown up into a hedge fund CEO. The novelty in the first film of seeing a baby in a business suit with tiny Trump hands, sucking a dummy and voiced by Alec Baldwin, has well and truly worn off. The frantic pace will leave grownups feeling as if they’ve been battered over the head with a brick, or at the very least reaching for the Anadin Extra. It is a noisy and nonsensical film, with a pointlessly convoluted plot that sailed over the head of the four-year-old I watched it with. W hen Martin Amis was asked if he’d ever consider writing for children, he reportedly answered: “I might, if I had brain damage.” His sniffiness completely disregards the genius it takes to see the world through a kid’s eyes – not something this Boss Baby sequel pulls off with any flair.
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