The end of the year is coming up fast, and if I have any hope of clearing out my backlog of reviews then I’d better get cracking – there’s still a few to go. I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this, but it was one of my writing goals for this year to review every movie that I watch in the cinema, and every book I read. The odd video game or other thing would stick its head in here and there, on rare occasions when the writing bug would take hold.
Onto the review. Horrible Bossees doesn’t so much have a plot as a framework on which a number of jokes are hung. These range from mildly annoying to genuinely amusing. My guess is that the movie was a contrivance allowing the screenplay writers to give themselves carte blanche to have a bunch of suburban middle-class white men to make inappropriate social comments.
The three eponymous bosses are extreme cariacatures of treacherousness, libidinousness, and nepotistic…ness. Each is paired up with one of our hapless heroes: Nick (Jason Bateman), Dale (Charlie Day) and Kurt (Jason Sudeikis). In a style reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz – lacks a certain je ne sais qua that would allow him to escape his situation. It’s in these dire straits that the trio half-jokingly formulate a plan to assassinate their superiors, and the movie takes a turn for the better.
Enter Jamie Foxx as a shady hitman. The scenes with him in it almost justifies the existence this movie (to say nothing of Jennifer Aniston’s, um… appearances – whatever you choose to read into that word).
What makes the movie border on intolerable is the way that Dave’s whiney voice increases in pitch throughout the whole movie until by the end his screechings give Chris Rock a run for his money.
Kevin Spacey, as Nick’s boss Dave Harken, did well with what he was given; he plays the snarky bad guy with ease. Colin Farrell’s talents were completely wasted (har har) in the role of drug addled Bobby Pellitt, Kurt’s nemesis, and Aniston tries desperately to reinvent herself as a sexy middle-aged woman, although she has obviously had herself cosmetically altered to have the body of someone much younger. Still, her acting was as unmoving as her gravity defying bosoms, and as wooden as the nether regions of those who watched this for its smut potential.
Watch this one if you’ll be happy for 15 minutes of genuine belly laughs to justify the other hour-and-a-half of crude, lewd, “dude” humour.