Horrible Bosses Review
By: Joshua “You ever watch that show Gossip Girl? I fingered myself so hard to that Penn Badgley the other night that I broke a nail” Richey
For those of you that are still recovering from the disappointment that was The Hangover 2, Horrible Bosses may be just what the doctor ordered. It’s a film that provides the non-stop laughs that many of us were hoping to get out of The Hangover but also does enough to stand on its own as a comedy.
Nick (Jason Bateman), Dale (Charlie Day) and Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) are three lifelong buddies that all have one thing in common: they hate their bosses. Nick’s boss, Harken (Kevin Spacey), is a ball busting superior that dangles a promotion opportunity in front of Nick as a way to deceive him into working longer hours and to humiliate him in front of his peers. Dale’s boss, Julia (Jennifer Aniston), may not be the hard ass that Harken is, but her constant sexual harassment of Dale and her constant threats to tell Dale’s fiancé that they had an affair – even though they haven’t — make her just as awful. Kurt’s boss, Bobby (Colin Farrell), is a dopehead that is more concerned with spending the company’s money on cocaine and firing “the fatties” than he is with actually running the company. Over dinner one night, the three buddies agree that their lives would be so much easier if their bosses were out of the picture. Before they know it, with the assistance of a shady hitman named Dean ‘Motherfucker’ Jones (Jamie Foxx), Nick, Dale and Kurt are each plotting ways to kill their horrible bosses.
While this film’s biggest asset is clearly the well written gut-clenching humor that spans from the opening credits to the closing credits, part of what makes Horrible Bosses so enjoyable is watching these characters that we’ve seen before interact with one another. Don’t go into Horrible Bosses sit down with your popcorn and Diet Coke and expect to see Jason Bateman and Charlie Day do something different than you’re used to seeing. Bateman plays the soft spoken awkward guy that we’ve seen him play since he was a kid; Charlie Day is the high-pitched wildcard that we’ve all loved for years; and Jason Sudeikis, while not typecast as often as the others, plays the smartass that we’ve become accustomed to seeing him play. But while some may criticize that, I can honestly say that I enjoyed the movie more because of it. I mean, if you told me that there was a movie where Michael Bluth from Arrested Development and Charlie from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia plot to kill Kevin Spacey and Jennifer Aniston, I’d tell you that that sounds like a movie that I need to see.
For a summer that has been filled with corny superhero films and glorified computer animated robot porn, Horrible Bosses is the one movie that I would recommend to anyone that is going out to the movies with their friends or out on a date. It may not make the money that Hangover 2 did, but unlike Hangover, you will be able to leave the theater 90-minutes later with a sore jaw from laughing and the satisfaction of knowing that you just got your money’s worth.
We give Horrible Bosses 4 toothbrushes in the ass out of 5.
