Horrible Bosses (2011)

With a relatively-solid 69% score on Rottentomatoes.com (133 fresh, 60 rotten reviews), I went into Horrible Bosses with the same kind of expectation I had for Bridesmaids and the original Hangover. I expected it to be a bit crude, have a handful of laughs and fill a couple of hours on a rainy Tuesday evening. They’ve been making this kind of committee-comedy for decades in Hollywood and every now and again they work.

This isn’t one of those times.

Horrible Bosses isn’t so much an awful movie as it is a failure at being an awful movie. Everything about it is mediocre at best and derisive at worst. It isn’t nearly as funny as it should be, the characters are direct lifts from other films and TV series, and the plot, dialogue and jokes are so telegraphed that the entire production team seems to have been aiming for an audience of half-wits. Jason Bateman is asked to play his Arrested Development Michael Bluth (again), Charlie Day, his It’s Always Raining in Philadelphia character, Spacey reprises his corporate asshole rendition for the 8th time and Colin Farrell does…..well, something the sits uncomfortably between caricature and bad summer stock acting-by-bazooka.

There isn’t a subtle moment in Horrible Bosses, but its biggest problem is just how stupid the entire project thinks its audience is… and it’s really insulting. In the opening 5 minutes it becomes obvious to anyone who’s still conscious that the film is going to be a variant on Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (throw Momma From the Train for those of you born in the 80’s). You kill my boss and I’ll kill yours. It takes 40 minutes for the film to actually openly acknowledge this and it’s played as a reveal. At one point, it gets so bad that Farrell’s sleazy bad-son actually declares he “dreamed of being on a beach with a model serving me tropical drinks. That’s what I dreamed of. And it’s exactly what’ gonna happen as soon I squeeze out every bit of profit out of this fucking company”….out loud. The problem with inane writing like this is the audience already knows what the characters are going to say and what’s going to happen well before the movie seems to. Nothing of  what Farrell’s Bobby Pellit says hasn’t already been established and communicated and it makes the whole movie feel like an R-rated movie for developmentally-delayed toddlers. Being spoon-fed crappy dialogue and retreaded fart jokes is bad enough, but to presume that no one will understand the plot unless one of the badly-drawn/stolen characters explains it in detail made this one of the most excruciating rainy Tuesday nights I’ve been forced to endure.

I should have just shut Horrible Bosses off, like I do with most of the garbage Hollywood hoses us with, but I kept watching and expecting that 69% of the critics and 74% of the viewing audience weren’t off their rockers and some sort of epic save might actually redeem the whole tawdry mess during the final act. No so luck. In fact, it gets worse rather than better.

If you haven’t already succumbed to the marketing bombardment Horrible Bosses got for its theatrical and DVD releases, do yourself a favour and skip this piece of shit. You’d be miles ahead watching It’s Always Sunny and Arrested Development again, if only to see some original characters and a little coherent comedy writing. A potentially great cast is really squandered on second rate material here and I’m stunned it received the positive notices it did. 

Loser.