Movie Reviews

‘The Boss Baby: Family Business’ Blu-Ray Review – Animated Sequel Offers A Bit More Heart Than Predecessor

By Dillon Gonzales
September 15, 2021
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In the sequel to DreamWorks Animation’s Oscar®-nominated blockbuster comedy, the Templeton brothers—Tim and his Boss Baby little bro Ted—have become adults and drifted away from each other. Enter new boss baby Tina with a cutting-edge approach and can-do attitude that is determined to bring them together again…and inspire a new family business.

For in-depth thoughts on The Boss Baby: Family Business, please see my colleague Dom Fisher’s review from its original theatrical release here.

Video Quality

The Boss Baby: Family Business comes to Blu-Ray with a stunning and vibrant 1080p transfer. The colors present in this transfer are practically leaping off the screen with the wide range of hues permeating every inch of the frame. The textures, from the character designs to the environments, are extremely impressive and give the film a real sense of depth. One of the areas where the sequel improved on the original film is the fluidity of the character designs. All of the individual strands of hair are unique and flowing in a subtly more natural way. The level of detail these animators put into each environment shines through here. Black levels are incredibly strong with no hint of compression artifacts or digital anomalies of the sort. To say this is anything less than perfection would be a grave misrepresentation of the quality.

Audio Quality

This Blu-Ray utilizes a Dolby Atmos track that gives this lively film a real vitality. There is an emphasis on the front channels for a good portion of the sounds, but activity kicks in to the surrounds and rears during the more kinetic and action-oriented bits. The film really satisfies when it comes to the music, and this track pumps the sound straight through your body in a really satisfying, enveloping way. Dialogue is crisp and clear without ever getting lost amongst the music or sound effects. The low end effects from the subwoofer give certain moments that much-needed extra weight to completely sell it for the audience. Atmospheric sound effects are rendered appropriately within the mix so that directionality is never an issue. The Boss Baby: Family Business will have your house rocking and shaking in the best way.

Special Features

Audio Commentary: Director/Exec. Producer Tom McGrath, Producer Jeff Hermann and Production Designer Raymond Zibach provide a steady commentary track in which they delve into finding the emotional throughline of the film, unused openings, callbacks to the first film. personal elements injected into the narrative and more. While not super lively, it is a fairly informative listen if you like the film.

Precious Templeton – A Pony Tale: A four-minute all-new short in which Precious Templeton enters the Perfect Pony Prize Pageant and learns some valuable lessons in the midst of a jewel heist. The bedtime-story aesthetic works well for this amusing little tale.

Deleted Scene with Intro By Director Tom McGrath: A nearly four-minute featurette in which McGrath discusses the reasons behind cutting an imaginative “time out” sequence involving alien dolphins before showing the scene in rough animatic form. This would have been a fun addition to the final film.

Never Grow Up – The Big Babies Behind The Boss Baby: Family Business: A six-minute piece in which the cast and crew discuss what their role would be at Baby Corp, the themes of the film, the process of creating the film in quarantine, the characters they relate to and more.

Roll Call: A nine-minute look at the performers in the film and the roles their characters play in the story. We get a closer look at Alec Baldwin, Amy Sedaris and James Marsden.

Creative Experiment Lab: Three experiments totaling seven minutes are provided here including how to make a potato clock, a “volcano” and how to “shrink” some plastic.

Boss Baby Art Class – How To Draw: A three-part tutorial totaling eight minutes in which Storyboard Artist Catherine Rader guides you through how to draw Ted, Tina and Precious Templeton.

“Together We Stand” Lyric Video: A three-minute whimsical lyric video for this song by Tina.

Final Thoughts

The Boss Baby: Family Business is far from perfect, but it does improve on the first film by quite a bit thanks to a better handling of the emotional themes. The film does get a bit messy and off-course at points, but for what it sets out to accomplish it works pretty well. Some humor will be a bit too juvenile for adults, but there are some jokes that should make all ages laugh. At the very least, older members of the audience might get a bit misty-eyed at some of the parent-child dynamics. Universal Pictures Home Entertainment has provided a Blu-Ray for this film that is quite a knockout in the A/V department, so we can only imagine how amazing the 4K UHD Blu-Ray is that was not available for review. Either way, you are getting a disc of great quality filled with fun special features. Recommended

The Boss Baby: Family Business is currently available to purchase on 4K UHD Blu-Ray, Blu-Ray, DVD and Digital.

Note: Images presented in this review are not reflective of the image quality of the Blu-Ray.

Disclaimer: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment has supplied a copy of this disc free of charge for review purposes. All opinions in this review are the honest reactions of the author.