Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Boss Baby: Back In Business’ On Netflix, A Spin-Off Of The Hit Movie

Did you — or more accurately, your kids — love the movie The Boss Baby? Netflix has taken advantage of the 2017 hit movie based on Maria Frazee’s book and made a series out of it. Will The Boss Baby: Back In Business make people want to see all Boss, all the time?

THE BOSS BABY: BACK IN BUSINESS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A kid adventurer is being held by aliens, who are forcing him to eat green squiggly things. Then we cut to the kid screaming in his dining room as his mom puts down a plate of green beans. His parents don’t know why he hates green beans when his suit-and-tie-clad baby brother gobbles them up.

The Gist: The kid is Tim (Pierce Gagnon), and when their parents leave the room, his little brother drops his gurgling baby facade and becomes the Boss Baby (JP Karliak). “Templeton,” he says to his brother, calling him by his last name, “They’re just parents. You should be playing them like a kazoo.”

Tim asks Boss Baby to eat his green beans, which Boss agrees to, but of course he wants something in return. “It’s business!” he says. Of course, being a baby, he needs Timmy to smash up his green beans for him in order to make sure he doesn’t choke.

Tim wants to go to where Boss works, mainly because he remembers there are cookies in the break room. Boss gives them both a pacifier with a “new transport chip”, and they’re beamed to Baby Corp., where the Boss works. He explains to Timmy that, while Baby Corp. makes babies for families, his job is to “make sure people love babies.” So he wants to ensure every baby is cute and funny so people give the baby love, thus making people want more babies. It keeps Baby Corp.’s assembly line running.

But there’s trouble, right in Boss’ neighborhood. A baby named Scooter Buskie is crying, screaming, throwing things, and is overall “the worst baby in the world,” killing the desire of his neighbors to have babies — some of them want to (gasp!) adopt cats. Boss and his crew — big muscle-baby Jimbo (Kevin Michael Richardson), tactical specialist Staci (Alex Cazares) and The Triplets (Eric Bell Jr.) who “mostly stay in the office” — distract Sccoter’s parents with a contraption of a baby swing while they try to get Scooter to behave.

At a certain point, Boss decides to do a “factory recall”, and replace Scooter with a new model of baby, but Tim won’t let Boss take someone’s kid away. Who figures out how to bring Scooter back and make the neighbors love babies again?

Our Take: We’ll admit we’ve never seen the original Boss Baby movie, with Alec Baldwin playing the Boss — unless you count the last five minutes our three-year-old stared at as it played at the eye doctor’s office. Because of this, the whys and hows of Tim and Boss’ relationship were a mystery to us. But, like most cartoons like this, knowing the story beforehand isn’t all that necessary.

One thing we did appreciate is that Baldwin’s replacement, JP Karliak, didn’t even try to sound like Baldwin. He gives Boss a more calculated, quick-talking personality, more akin to Stewie from Family Guy than anyone else.

The show definitely leans on the “hey, they may walk and talk like adults, but they’re still babies!” vibe, showing these supposed sharp business people feeding on bottles and walking around in exersaucers, like Boss’ boss, the Mega Fat CEO Baby (Flula Borg). Mega Fat CEO Baby, for some reason, hates Boss but can’t fire him without approval from the board of directors. How long that vibe can continue without getting old is anyone’s guess.

What age group should watch: This definitely isn’t a show for preschoolers, even though it’s part of Netflix’s kids’ offerings. While many of the jokes will still go over their heads — when Scooter pukes, for instance, Boss says “it’s like negotiating with North Korea!” — this seems like it’s safe for kids 7 and up.

Parting Shot: Timmy figures out that, once Scooter’s neighbors see that his family loves him no matter how “bad” he is, their desire to have babies will grow. Boss is so happy that the problem has been solved, and asks Tim what he can do to repay his big brother. Of course, it involves green beans.

Sleeper Star: We like Richardson as the big muscle baby who just wants hugs.

Most Pilot-y Line: Not sure if the image of a baby watching a video trying to brainswash him into being good is the world’s best imagery.

Our Call: Stream It, though only if your kid is older. It plays more like a not-so-funny primetime animated FOX show than a show for kids, but it’s also pretty harmless.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Watch The Boss Baby: Back In Business on Netflix