filmland / By Charlie Myers

Killin’ Time

Offing Bosses will suffice until something better comes along

(July 14, 2011)  Reviews

HORRIBLE BOSSES. So why do I find myself at the latest dick flick? There are several possible answers. For one thing, my constant movie-going companion expressed some interest in the film when I said I was considering calling the Journal to beg off reviewing it. This was on Wednesday and when she discovered what the film was actually about on Friday, I was too embarrassed to call my editor at that late juncture.

Horrible Bosses

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Secondly, I thought maybe I should make up for skipping Hangover 2 after having excoriated the first one (I’m forbidden to mentioning the title) in my review and for months afterward. After all, it’s always useful to have a whipping boy.

Finally, Horrible Bosses is the third consecutive summer film to feature a gracefully aging female star playing against type, in this instance Jennifer Aniston as an aggressively nymphomaniacal, sexually harassing dentist (following Cameron Diaz’s turn as a bad teacher and an unsmiling Julia Roberts as a jaded one).

Well, the worst is yet to be revealed: I actually laughed with some regularity while watching TV director Seth Gordon’s exercise in would-be workplace mayhem. I can try to tell myself that I was just admiring the admirable comic timing of the capable cast but, in truth, this foul-mouthed unapologetic exercise involving the typical dick flick elements of homophobia, sexism and racism, with near male-on-male golden shower sex thrown in, was unaccountably amusing.

The plot actually helped here, providing the inventive actors a lot of room for comic riffs. The primary story is straightforward. Nick (Jason Bateman), Dale (Charlie Day) and Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) all work for truly awful, demeaning bosses, although Nick and Kurt don’t think that Dale being sexually harassed by Dr. Julia Harris (Aniston) is all that bad. So, they concoct a scheme to hire someone to off the bosses, only to end up with “murder coach” Dean Motherfucker Jones (a funny Jamie Foxx) instead.

The permutations of this premise are endless and the film hits many of them. In addition to Aniston, Colin Farrell and Kevin Spacey (with his usual smooth, off-handed nastiness) weigh in nicely as the other two targets of the amateur hit men. The script, co-written by John Francis Daley who plays Dr. Sweets on the TV series Bones, is tight and so is the direction.

Claudia actually made it through the whole film without falling asleep so life is good — at least somewhere. I could use a little Tree of Life myself. Rated R (language). 98m. At the Broadway, Mill Creek, Minor and Fortuna.

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