hbossesWork Place Mayhem
Horrible Bosses
Starring: Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx
Director; Seth Gordon
Scriptwriters: Michael Markowitz, Jonathan M. Goldstein and John Francis Daley
Warner Brothers Pictures
Rating: R for crude and sexual humor, language, drug material and violence
Running Length:102 minutes
 
Possibly the worst case scenarios imagined, are par for the course in this adult comedy directed by Seth Gordon. You have a boss who sets you up for a promotion only to have you fall into his wicked scenario so he doesn't have to promote you (Kevin Spacey). You have a female boss who comes on to you like a porn movie (Jennifer Aniston) and you have a boss who inherited the company and lives on drugs and alcohol, plus just plain hates you (an unrecognizable Colin Farrell.)  These are the situations facing Jason Bateman, Charlie Day (affectionately called The Hamster) and Jason Sudeikis. What to do?  Within semi-legal bounds, that is, or just plain illegal?
 
The film begins with letting us know the typical day of the guys. Bateman works literally 24/7 with no recognition from Spacey, who thinks his wife is sleeping with anything that moves. Day is a dental hygienist fighting off the advances of  Dr. Aniston who thinks nothing of sedating patients and taking lewd photos of them. Sudeikis works for kindly Donald Sutherland who promptly dies and the evil coke-sniffing son, Farrell inherits the company, wanting to fire overweight people for starters. After work, the guys discuss their problems and finally want to off the bosses. They don't know how to, so find an “expert,” by the name of  M--F-- Jones (Jamie Foxx). They decide to kill each other’s bosses, which results in a Three Stooges film with surveillance, breaking and entering, narrow escapes and advice from their electronic car monitoring system named Gregory. An example is the guys breaking into Farrell’s house to get incriminating evidence of drug use, then having Day spill a bowl (that’s right a bowl) of cocaine on the carpet, trying to clean it up, inhaling enough for an army, then trying to act normal. At Spacey’s house, they find he is a cat-lover and the cat is psychotic. When things go together, it is a direction no one thought of and the audience is thinking they may not have it so bad after all.
 
The three actors, Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day work well together.  Bateman is always the hesitant one and the first to pull back. Day talks so fast, he could be in an Alvin-The-Chipmunk movie and Sudeikis has an eye for the ladies---all the time. Colin Farrell chews the scenery as a guy so into drugs that the expression is frozen on his face. Aniston goes about in the flimsiest of clothing and really likes Charlie. Spacey is the kind of boss you would trust only if he were six feet under. All in all, the script, delivery and scenes in “Horrible Bosses” ring with a bit of truth and are laughable.
 
I was pleasantly surprised that even though Horrible Bosses (don't care for the title) has gross humor, it goes with the plot of three guys at the ends of their ropes. They don't have anything to lose at this point, and are threatened with bad reviews if they leave their present employment. Emotional blackmail in the workplace turns out to be a common topic by people who see power as their private domain. How did these people get to be bosses in the first place? By taking notes from their bosses. “Horrible Bosses” is definitely an adult, R-rated  film in the gross-out vein of a Hangover movie, but a few steps up the ladder.
 
3tocks
 
Copyright 2011 Marie Asner