Unreal Movie Review: Horrible Bosses

4.5 out of 5 stars

Ah, the plight of the American worker.

Yes, the unemployed are the primary cause of concern in today’s economy (for everyone but politicians it seems), as their lives are undeniably the hardest out of all citizens. But what about those stuck in jobs with horrible working conditions, with bosses who take advantage of them knowing the barren employment wasteland that looms if they quit? They deserve a voice as well, and so Horrible Bosses was conceived.

We’ve all had bad bosses ourselves, so the titular concept is one that’s immediately relatable. But for this film, the idea is exaggerated to necessary comic proportions. The bosses aren’t just bad, they’re some of the most evil human beings alive, and the downtrodden workers aren’t just upset about it, they’re willing to actually kill them.

And you can see why, as they truly are downright demonic. Nick (Jason Bateman) is tormented by the president of his company, Mr. Harken (Kevin Spacey) who dangles a promotion in front of him to get him to work nights and weekends, only to snatch it away when the time comes. Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) loves his boss, but when he suffers a fatal heart attack and his misogynist cokehead son Bobby takes over, his work environment becomes unbearable.

The third and most likely hilarious plotline is perhaps the plight of poor Dale (Charley Day) who is constantly sexually harassed by his dentist boss Julia (Jennifer Aniston). As you would expect, getting groped by Jennifer Aniston wins him little sympathy from Nick and Kurt, but when she threatens to show comprising pictures she’s taken of him and her when he was under anesthesia to his fiancĂ©e, as Dale says, “let’s kill this bitch.”

Harassed by that? Yes, please.

The idea of murder starts as a drunken joke, but progresses to a full-fledged plan as the bosses ramp up the pain. The gang uses OnStar to guide them to the most dangerous bar in town, and employs the skills of a hitman named “Motherf*cker Jones” (Jamie Foxx) to help them map out their potential murder.

The idea is to make it look like an accident, and they come up with the Strangers on a Train-like plan to have each friend kill a boss that isn’t theirs (we must overlook that they are in no way strangers, and this is probably a terrible idea). They do recon on each target with varied results, and as expected, things do not go smoothly with their attempted triple homicide.

Many of you probably read Nattyb’s recent article about how comedies just aren’t funny anymore. His assertion was that there aren’t good “dumb” comedies these days, the way there used to be when Carrey and Sandler were in their prime. Comedy now has gone more highbrow, and movies just aren’t as laugh out loud funny as they used to be.

Why yes, that is the Old Spice guy.

Well I’m happy to report that I haven’t laughed this much in a theater in an exceptionally long time. No, Bateman, Sudeikis and Day aren’t anything close to the stylings of Jim Carrey, but their chemistry is undeniable with them taking the roles of straight man, winking rogue and wildcard respectively, and much of Horrible Bosses is the sort of dumb humor that’s been missing from films recently. The film could have done a lot of things differently to go more highbrow if they wanted. They could have integrated more commentary about the unemployed and the current state of labor, they could have crafted a smoother plot that cohesively tied the three separate plotlines together. As it stands, the road to the finale is rather rocky, and pieces can seem kind of hammered together at times.

The film is just too funny to not enjoy. The bosses are played to perfection by their respective actors. Kevin Spacey is even more psychopathic than he was as an actual serial killer in Se7en, Colin Farrell dons an American accent and comb over to play a perfect emperor of all douchebags and it’s shocking and hilarious to see Jennifer Aniston is full on sexual predator mode, talking dirty and posing half naked. That plotline is best served with her in the molesting role, as if the genders were flipped, and the third friend was subbed in with say, Kristin Wiig instead of Charlie Day, it would have been far more creepy than funny.

The boss and worker trios are what make the film, as each of the six play their part exceptionally well, which is often rare in an ensemble cast like this. Horrible Bosses is just a full-on laugh out loud comedy, in a time where such a term seems to becoming extinct.

4.5 out of 5 stars

“Come to papa.”

 

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4 Comments

  1. “Yes, the unemployed are the primary cause of concern in today’s economy (for everyone but politicians it seems)”

    The truth is that our elected officials implement measures to avoid inflation at the cost of unemployment.

    “Many of you probably read Nattyb’s recent article about how comedies just aren’t funny anymore.”

    Glad you brought that up. I think that post came more from nostalgia than actual quality of the films. I saw most of those movies that he mention close to their release, and never found them to be classics at that time or afterwards.

    This movie (HB) isn’t a classic in itself, but it is damn funny. I loved Charlie Day in his more professional Charlie Kelley role. I almost cried when he bailed everyone out using Bird Law!

  2. I just love the double standards in movies these days. The storyline where the dentist sexually harasses Dale is only funny JUST because she’s a woman and he’s a man. If the dentist were a man harassing a female assistant, it wouldn’t be played for laughs at all.

    It’s kind of odd how we acknowledge that a man harassing a woman is a crime, but when a woman does the exact same thing to a man, we don’t take it seriously. Somehow, someway, just because the victim was male and the perpetrator female, it’s not seen as the awful thing that it is. Sexual harassment is never funny, no matter what the genders of the perpetrator and the victim are. There is no difference between a man molesting an unwilling woman and a woman molesting an unwilling man.

    Which is why I’m totally uninterested in this movie.

    /rant over

  3. Just caught this over the weekend, and I’d have to say this is by far the funniest disgruntled worker movie since Office Space…and Jennifer Aniston is waaay better in this movie than in Office Space. Really, all three of the horrible bosses are the real stars of the show, Kevin Spacey plays the evil ruthless boss well, and Colin Farrell is totally in his element as a crazy spoiled coke head boss.

    The bond between the three protagonists is also quite strong, loved when they were at the bar talking about the plan to kill the bosses for the first time, it was some great riffing between the three of them…(also did anyone else catch that new Dirty Heads song w/ the new Sublime guy? It’s called “Lay Me Down” and it’s like the chillest summer jam ever)

    Hope they don’t screw up this good buddy movie by making a crappy sequel (cough, cough The Hangover 2)!

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