Horrible Bosses
Review by Anthony Morris
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Horrible Bosses
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Sometimes you have a great idea for a film, only to realise five
minutes later that if you actually made the film you'd have to leave
out everything that makes the idea great.
And other times you don't realise that until you've already started work, in which case you get Horrible Bosses.
It's
easy to see how the idea got off the ground : as Homer Simpson once
said, "Kill my boss? Dare I live out the American dream?". Problem is –
and this probably explains why the script had nine writers and took six
years to get off the ground – making a comedy out of people setting out
to commit pre-meditated murder is a little tricky.
This tries
really hard, mind you, and having a trio of likable and very funny
leads in Jason Bateman (a beat-down office-working chump terrorised by
Kevin Spacey), Jason Sudeikis (a chemical company worker who's dream
job becomes a nightmare when the bosses' cokehead son Colin Farrel
takes over) and Charlie Day (a sweet, engaged dental technician
constantly sexually harassed by a crazy Jennifer Aniston) is a good
start.
But there’s so much set-up to put in place – the film
has to establish three characters and their three horrible bosses – it
takes a while before the story can even really start, and then the film
isn't sure how silly to play things.
After one authentically
funny moment where their decision to all just quit and risk
unemployment is countered by the sudden arrival of a hilariously
desperate unemployed friend, things again get bogged down in working
out how they're going to bump off their bosses instead of getting on
with the killing.
Which, being a Hollywood comedy that's
totally afraid of the dark (dark comedy, that is), is never going to
involve them actually pulling the trigger on anyone.
It
doesn't matter how good your cast is – and this has a really good cast
from top to bottom, including a great cameo from Jamie Fox as their
murder mentor – if the script doesn't work.
Despite a handful of
good scenes this spends too much time making sure we don't think the
guys are killers and making sure they don’t actually kill anyone to
take full advantage of revelling in what is, as Homer said, the
American dream. 3 out
of 5
Horrible Bosses
Australian release: 25th August,
2011
Official
Site: Horrible Bosses
Cast: Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Steve Wiebe, Kevin Spacey and Jason Sudeikis.
Director: Seth Gordon
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