Parents' Guide to The Boss Baby: Family Business

This animated sequel is more likely to entertain younger audiences than adults, but it does encourage strong sibling bonds and explains the need for parental guidance and boundaries. Director Tom McGrath, working from a script by Michael McCullers, revisits the parts of The Boss Baby that little kids enjoyed most (the antics, the animals, the rivalry-turned-teamwork), while adding in another generation of siblings in the form of Tim's two girls. With his memorable voice, Goldblum is an ideal choice as the visionary (but secretly villainous) headmaster Dr. Armstrong. He's responsible for the movie's biggest reveal (the fact that Tina is a Baby Corp. agent is included in the trailer), and it's fairly funny, even given the context of a world in which babies can talk like adults.

The subplots favor Tim, who, as a concerned stay-at-home dad disguised as a 7-year-old, prioritizes getting to know his daughter better over the brothers' overall mission. Sure, he knows his orders, but he really takes advantage of being in Tabitha's class to discover just how brilliant (and in some ways socially awkward and lonely) she is at school. Baldwin's Ted continues to milk the gravitas of his deep voice by persuading the baby room's toddlers to organize and revolt. Those scenes, with diapered babies who smear glue on themselves and act believably like infants and toddlers, are the movie's funniest. There's not much else to milk out of this franchise, but for fans of the original, this sequel hits all of the expected marks with its baby shenanigans and physical comedy bits.