Horrible Bosses is a comedy with an enormous potential audience of disgruntled employees, one suspects. Stuck in an office with people who get on your nerves is bad enough, but when it’s your boss and they’re out of control… it’s easy to imagine that people while away their internment by fantasising about a sweet revenge. Writer Michael Markowitz may well have been one of those employees.
His story is a kind of logical extension of those fantasies, with three different versions played out to give the impulse its full expression, and it succeeds to varying degrees. In this case, three buddies spend their evenings in a bar complaining how their bosses are ruining their lives. As the beer starts to take hold, someone jokingly suggests that they kill their bosses, and the more they think about it, the more it seems like the best solution. But these are wimpy white suburban boys, with no experience and a very limited capacity for violence, so they decide to find a hit man.
However, when they discover they can’t afford him, the hit man acts as their consultant instead, telling them how to do the deed without getting caught.
In a nutshell, the answer is to kill each other’s bosses, so there’s nothing connecting the victim to the perpetrator. Nick (Jason Bateman) is basically the straight man of the trio. He’s not all that funny himself but acts as the springboard necessary for the other two. Dale (Charley Day) is the clown who provides the most and the best of the comedy, the little dude who swings between laid back and wildly out of control, whereas Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) hovers between the two, a nice guy but with some very humorous character flaws.
The bosses in question are a collective class act: Kevin Spacey is repellent as the megalomaniac company vice-president, Jennifer Anniston has fun as the sexually-predatory dentist, and Colin Farrell is loopy as the drug-crazed son who inherits the company, a part that was probably written for Charlie Sheen. The basic premise of the film is clever enough, but the mechanics of its construction seem a little out of kilter.
It takes a long time to set up the story, the middle section seems shorter than it should, and the resolution sneaks up on you. Still, it’s knockabout comedy, so classical composition isn’t vital for its success. Humour is much more important, and it takes many forms. There’s a heady blend of slapstick, situation comedy and lots of verbal gags. Indeed, there is a lot of bad language, particularly early on, and this is where it gets an MA15+ rating, as there’s no confronting sex or violence to speak of.
Presumably this is an attempt to be hip but it doesn’t always work, as though it is trying too hard, and generally, in fact, much of the humour is a little juvenile. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not amusing, though. There are many genuinely funny moments in the film, and some are pleasantly unexpected. Nevertheless it’s a bit patchy in places.
That said, many people will enjoy Horrible Bosses, although it will probably appeal more to a younger set, particularly those who harbour dark thoughts about doing away with their employers.
