Horrible Bosses
3 stars (out of 4)
Rated: 14A
The summer’s most killer comedy would be sinister if it wasn’t so ridiculous
So much scenery is chewed during the course of Horrible Bosses, it’s almost as if director Seth Gordon unleashed a plague of locusts while filming.
Ads for the movie handily and accurately describe Kevin Spacey’s financier character Dave as “psycho,” Jennifer Aniston’s randy dentist Julia as “maneater” and Colin Farrell’s coke-snorting chemical heir Bobby as “tool.”
The three play their sociopathic roles with such gusto (especially Aniston, who has never been funnier or raunchier) that no shrubbery is left unmunched or employee unmolested.
This gives us ample reason to cheer, or at least to understand, their impending murders, as planned by their respective unhappy wage slaves Nick (Jason Bateman), Dale (Charlie Day) and Kurt (Jason Sudeikis), well-cast doofuses who in another type of comedy might be referred to as the Three Stooges.
It’s not that best buddies Nick, Dale and Kurt are evil. Far from it. These guys just want to make a few bucks, get drunk and get laid like the rest of their male brethren. But they’ve been driven to desperate measures by the extreme actions of their bosses, which in Dale’s case includes sexual abuse from the roving hands of Dr. Julie. The lads figure they’d also be doing a favour to the rest of mankind by arranging for three “accidental” deaths.
Described in cold print like this, Horrible Bosses sounds like a far darker comedy than it really is. I think of it as more akin to old Ealing Studios comedies like Kind Hearts and Coronets or The Ladykillers, where the plotters are so ridiculous and prone to failure, you can hardly take their criminal plans seriously. It’s not murder most foul, but most fouled up.
This is certainly the case with Nick, Dale and Kurt, who can’t even figure out how to drive their cars out of a parking lot together without nearly smashing into one another, much less organize a triple whacking.
Their attempts to conscript professional help put them in the company of “murder consultant” Dean Jones (Jamie Foxx), whose middle name is the source of much merriment.
He’s going to advise Nick, Dale and Kurt on how to deliver the coup de grace to their hated employers. What do you want to bet that things aren’t going to go exactly as planned?
Horrible Bosses is what they call a “hard R” comedy stateside, which means a lot of profanity, sexual situations and licentious behaviour that suggests this film won’t be shown on airplanes anytime soon.
This is a good thing, because director Gordon (The King of Kong) and writers Michael Markowitz, John Francis Daley and Jonathan M. Goldstein can really cut loose, unlike the neutered participants of the bootless Bad Teacher.
But it’s not all about baiting the censors. In fact, some of the funniest gags are the most family oriented ones, like the skittish pet cat that keeps pouncing at the wrong moment or the on-board car navigation assistant who keeps offering advice that isn’t called for.
And watch for a cameo by a veteran Canadian actor, who is in the movie to remind us that not all bosses are horrible.
Horrible Bosses also manages to keep us guessing about the ultimate outcome of the murder plots, no small feat in a laugher as broad as this one. It may not be the summer’s funniest comedy (that would be Bridesmaids), but it’s safe to say it’s the most killer one.
Peter Howell is a syndicated movie critic for The Toronto Star.