Horrible Bosses

While most people might agree that murder is pushing it a little too far, clearly you’ve never had a boss that is demanding, controlling, abusive, and just flat out evil. Luckily, Charlie Day, Jason Bateman, and Jason Sudeikis have, and you can learn from their trials and tribulations on what you what you can do, what you shouldn’t do, and what you must do when dealing with a psychotic boss.

The three aforementioned actors play Dale, Nick, and Kurt respectively and their bosses are the “man-eater” Dr. Julia Harris (Jennifer Aniston), the “psycho” David Harken (Kevin Spacey), and the “tool” Bobby Pellitt (Colin Farrell). Each of the titular bosses are in fact horrible, but in the case of Harken, he’s downright murderous. At first our heroes try to simply go about their daily lives while dealing with these monsters, but it doesn’t take long for their patience to be pushed to the breaking point. Clearly the obvious solution is to quit, but these bosses have prepared for that and blacklisting them from every organization in their field is at the top of the list.

So what’s a beleaguered employee to do? Get drunk, talk about how awful your boss is, and ingeniously decide to switch bosses and kill them off. It’s unfortunate for them that their plan is anything but foolproof and along the way they manage to make so many glaring errors that I was surprised they made it to the credits in more or less one piece.

This film is a comedy and while its humor is crass at points, I did find myself enjoying the plot. It doesn’t take itself too seriously during the comedic moments but it gets down to business and is suddenly sober when it needs to be. The sign of a good comedy is the ability for its stars to be believably funny. While Jennifer Aniston is notable for her many romantic comedy roles and her decade-long stint on Friends, she hasn’t had much luck in the arena of branching out. This film, however, highlights why Jennifer Aniston is absolutely hilarious in anything she does, she can act, she’s genuinely funny, and much like watching Betty White do things an “old lady” shouldn’t do, watching Jennifer Aniston in this made my day.

Kevin Spacey, as well, once again showed off his capability of playing cutthroat and ruthlessly manipulative characters as if this were a precursor for House of Cards or something. He’s the epitome of evil and he does so with such finesse that you might actually fear what he’d do to the protagonists if he ever managed to get his hands around them.

Colin Farrell, playing what amounts to a cameo really, is still funny in what little screen time he has. While drug use is never funny, his cocaine-fueled logic is hysterical. It kind of makes me wish they had used him as much as the other two.

The other important cast members are Lindsay Sloane (Big Red from Bring it On and one of Sabrina Sellman’s revolving door of friends in Sabrina the Teenage Witch) is Dale’s fiancé and Jamie Foxx plays the ridiculous crime expert who really doesn’t know what he’s talking about. They each fill a niche but that’s about it on their characters.

The movie is funny, engaging, and it might just keep you on the edge of your seat.