This only very partially explains why the Boss Baby comes to the Templetons’ house, to disrupt the idyllic, three’s-company life of Tim and his parents. Another explanation is that the Boss Baby has infiltrated the Templeton family as a matter of corporate espionage: The Templetons both work in marketing for Puppy Co., a sort of Petco-meets-puppy mill, which is in the process of creating something called a Forever Puppy, which is a puppy that, yes, stays a puppy forever. “Throughout history, people have loved babies more than anything—we were number-one!” the Boss Baby explains to Tim. The Forever Puppy, however, with its permadorability, might compromise that. (Or, as Boss Baby puts it, Boss Babyly: “It could put the baby business out of business, baby!”)

So that sort of explains things. But another explanation for the Boss Baby’s presence is that Tim has an extremely active imagination, the kind that might be primed to go on overdrive (it was all just a dream, etc.) when a new sibling comes along to monopolize the parental attention that Tim used to have to himself. And then there’s the other, and perhaps main, thing explaining the general presence of the Boss Baby: It’s very funny to think of infants, adorable and helpless and demanding as they are, as C-suite executives. The boss-meets-baby fusion the movie plays on isn’t merely absurd; it’s also extremely apt. Babies are bosses—every parent knows that—and that is the central joke of a movie that is jam-packed with a dizzying number of them.

The Boss Baby, whose voice Baldwin imbues with a delightfully Donaghyan air of six-sigma swagger, takes the compromises of new parenthood to their delightfully logical conclusion: The Templetons’ new infant wears a slick black suit that features ample room, in its otherwise slim cut, for a diaper. He wears a fancy watch. And sock garters. He carries a briefcase. And he is above all extremely aware of being the Boss. We know this because when Tim asks him, “Who are you?,” the Boss Baby replies, “Let’s just say I’m the boss.” And also because, later on in the film, the Boss Baby declares, “Tim, I may look like a baby, but trust me, I’m all grown up.” And because, later, the Boss Baby further clarifies, “The truth is, I’m no ordinary baby.”

The Boss Baby is based on the illustrated board book from Marla Frazee (a work that, Kirkus wrote, “will appeal to parents, of course, but also to siblings who see a new baby demand so much of mom and dad’s time and energy”). It’s a rich premise, offering a similar kid-movie balance: There’s a little here for the kiddos, definitely, and a little, as well, for the adults.

The problem is that the movie isn’t content with that one malleable notion of siblinghood and its discontents. Instead The Boss Baby layers on the jokes, and the ideas, and the feels. It indulges in chaos. Baldwin’s “no ordinary baby” is desperate to prevent the Forever Puppy from being put on the market, because that’s the only way for him to get promoted to the highest echelons of Baby Corp. This leads a Puppy Co. henchman to chase the Boss Baby and his brother around to try to prevent them from reaching the puppies, which in turn leads the Boss Baby and his brother to Las Vegas (cue the jokes about the unaffordability of flying First Class, and also the jokes about Elvis), where Puppy Co. is announcing the development of the Forever Puppy at a corporate convention. This in turn leads the duo—zig!—to find their parents in Vegas, and in turn infuriates the head of Puppy Co., who turns out to have an unforeseen connection to Baby Corp., and things culminate in everyone doing battle over ... a rocket ship loaded full of puppies. Zag?