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‘Horrible Bosses’ is a horrible movie
‘HORRIBLE BOSSES’
Grade: F
Credits: Directed by Seth Gordon; starring Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day, Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell and Jennifer Aniston
Rating: R for crude and sexual content, pervasive language and some drug material
Running time: 1:40
Movie
Horrible Bosses
For Nick, Kurt and Dale, the only thing that would make the daily grind more tolerable would be to grind their intolerable bosses into dust. Quitting is not an option, so, with the benefit of a few-too-many drinks and some dubious advice from a hustling ex-con, the three friends devise a convoluted and seemingly foolproof plan to rid themselves of their respective employers -- permanently. There's only one problem: even the best laid plans are only as foolproof as the brains behind them.
By Colin Covert
Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
If you are bright enough to count your change at the popcorn stand, you are too smart to see “Horrible Bosses.”
This misbegotten mess mashes the “three nitwits on an adventure” template of the “Hangover” movies into a workplace comedy-slash-vigilante fantasy.
With indifferent direction, repetitive action and gags that belong in the Comedy Ancient History Museum, this dreary, joke-thin film is pitched well south of the lowest common denominator. Somewhere around Antarctica, perhaps.
Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day play downtrodden workers who decide to terminate their obnoxious employers, permanently.
The premise could have made for a fun-bad romp, but the production is boring-bad.
The fact that this lukewarm entertainment could attract such a high-profile cast is a measure of how debased American film comedy has become.
Bateman, who has been coasting for years on the goodwill he earned in “Arrested Development,” deserves to have that pass revoked, shredded and set afire. As the yes-man to an ubercreep executive (Kevin Spacey), Bateman makes an utterly unsympathetic corporate toady who is drinking buddies with Sudeikis and Day.
The boys’ beerfests devolve into misery-loves-company work related gripe sessions.
Jason No. 2 works for a hostile cokehead (Colin Farrell).
Day plays a dental assistant who is devoted to his fiancee and sexually harassed nonstop by his vampish employer (Jennifer Aniston).
With Bateman underplaying to the verge of invisibility, Sudeikis is doing a one-note turn as an overage frat boy, and the excitable Day piping his lines like a tea kettle, our heroes are every bit as hard to like as their workplace superiors.
When one suggests that a few assassinations would improve workplace morale, the boys head to a ghetto bar in search of a killer for hire.
Jamie Foxx steps up as a tattooed tough who charges them a fortune in exchange for homicide advice any casual viewer of “Law & Order” could provide. Thus ill-equipped, the saps set off on a light-hearted killing spree.
Naturally, fate thwarts their plans.
“Horrible Bosses” is too timid to lead anywhere truly dark and disquieting. Veering into troubling territory would imply a respect for the audience’s intelligence that this film entirely lacks.
With their bosses dead or defeated, the boys end up with a happily ever after finale (more or less) and clean hands.
Final score: Murder One, Audience Zero.