Seth Gordon’s “Horrible Bosses” isn’t in any way a great movie nor is it a bad movie. It’s filled with plot holes and logic errors, but usually in movies like these errors like those are forgiven. There’s nothing new here, it’s mostly more of the comedic same-old, same-old. I would say that “Horrible Bosses” is nearly an average film at best, however Kevin Spacey’s role as the psychotic boss David Harkin and Jennifer Aniston as the sexy, man-eating, too horny to handle Dr. Julia Harris D.D.S. definitely saved the film from being lost and ignored. Then again, I may be biased when it comes to Kevin Spacey, but who doesn’t like to see Spacey go a little crazy every now and then?
“Horrible Bosses” plays with the idea that almost every working soul has had at least once in their life: “if you could kill your boss and get away with it, would you?” Luckily for us, the answer to this question for our three leads played by Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis, the answer is yes. Once this is decided, a whole adventure of situational backfires, trip-ups and Ron White run-ins gets in the way of our leads thus resulting in the film before us. The story-line was pretty solid even though the characters decide that to prevent being connected to the murders through basic motive that they will each kill each other’s bosses, which raised a little red flag with me. Red Flag: I’m sure the police will notice three employers dropping dead and that the employees who would have something against them are all connected. But this little idea just seems to make sense at the time and we just go with it because if we didn’t, there’d be no movie. The only other major red flag that came up in the film that I can let go, is that these extremely wealthy people seem to be completely oblivious to the invention of a house alarm. Anyway, we move on…
The comedy here is pretty basic. If you’ve seen any 2 or 3 comedy movies made in the past decade, most likely a Judd Apatow movie, you’ve already seen at least 75% of the jokes in this movie. For me I can’t handle that kind of humor unless vile, disgusting and sexual things are just pouring from Jennifer Aniston who had me laughing the absolute most throughout the film. However, her sexual harassment victim named Dale doesn’t find it in the least bit funny nor do I find him in the least bit funny, at least not in this particular movie. I usually really enjoy Charlie Day’s comedy in the FX show “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia”, but here he began to get really annoying and it also worries me that he’s being typecast as the stupid, immature, hissy-fit throwing tag-along guy. As for the rest of the actors, except Spacey and Aniston, I really didn’t get anything out of their performances except just mediocre and average acting. It’s called “acting” as in you act like a different person rather than spouting off lines with your own personality. This might as well have been filmed like “The Office”.
The story itself was quite fun though as the bosses begin to get tangled up with one another thanks to mistakes that the aspiring murderers make. Although I really think that they could’ve made the story more interesting had they added in a “whodunit” sort of sub-plot instead of having one of the characters witness a particular crime that I will not spoil. The writing was pretty solid as is most often the case with a lot of legitimate comedies; the problem was just the cliche and over-used jokes. Also there were several references to other movies or productions. Come on, did you really think you could get through a movie called “Horrible Bosses” with Jennifer Aniston in it and not catch an “Office Space” reference or two? Or how about Charlie Day being the first and only one to pull a Danny DeVito reference?
I have nothing against this movie, I had/have a fairly neutral response to it. Nothing new, nothing different, nothing really edgy. It was fun and humorous at times but it’s definitely not on my list of favorite comedies.
“Horrible Bosses” is available on DVD/Blu-ray.
DIRECTING: 5
CINEMATOGRAPHY: 5
EDITING: 5
WRITING: 7
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT: 5
CONCEPT: 8
ACTING: 6
OPENING: 6
MIDDLE: 7
ENDING: 6
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TOTAL: 60%
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