Horrible Bosses [Review by Haus]

Horrible Bosses isn’t good. I’m not sure why a substantial fraction of reviewers seem to like it. Parsi didn’t mind it. I hated it.

Plot? Simple. The three leads, tormented at work, plot to kill their bosses. Ha, ha! That’s about all the synopsis I’ll do. Watch the trailer, you’ll get the idea.

My biggest problem was with one of the main characters: Charlie Day. I’ve never seen Day before, but I can report with certainty that I don’t find him funny. His falsetto delivery and comedic schtick in general just fall flat. Can’t stand him in this. The two Jasons — Bateman and Sudeikis — are characteristically watchable, but they don’t craft memorable characters here.

The evil bosses seemed promising: Aniston as a lecherous dentist, Spacey as an egomaniacal corporate manager, and Farrell as a strange, Kung Fu-obsessed creepy douche. But these characters are so over the top and two-dimensional that they come off wholly unbelievable, even for an R-rated comedy. (The film also squanders some good laughs since the bosses never really interact with one another. Come on — even De Niro and Pacino eventually sat down for coffee together in Heat.)

The main characters are largely indistinguishable from one another — sure, one is an alleged womanizer and another’s engaged, but they all play the gee-whiz stereotypical white guy. Very white. So white that we’re treated to jokes about rolling up the windows in a bad part of town, and going to a “black” bar for murder advice. I suspect some not-insignificant fraction of America will find this supremely droll. I didn’t.

Total blandness and homogeneity is also just a strange move for a comedy. Granted, the hopelessly white, polo-and-khakis character shows up in comedies from time to time — think Ed Helms in The Hangover — and can be funny. But here, all three main characters are this guy. The result is super boring. They all share the same perspective, deliver interchangeable punchlines, and could have been collapsed into a single guy for all I cared. I also didn’t sympathize with these guys at all. I don’t root for them. If anything, I wanted the bosses to kill these three.

The bosses aren’t given a chance to save this picture. Aniston does her best (as she did in the abysmal Just Go With It — she was literally the only good part of that film, and I love her a little for it) but in casting aside her cute-girl routine she just comes off uber-weird here. Spacey plays an evil dick with spray tan — as called for — but he’s just not very fun to watch. Colin Farrell is plain weird here. Very odd choice. I’ve seen almost all Farrell’s films, and I still don’t think he’s established enough of a persona as an actor for this slum-turn to be funny in itself. The juxtaposition is funny, all right: not funny-ha-ha but funny-strange.

I got virtually nothing out of this movie. I found it so unpleasant, unimaginative and flatly unfunny that I’ll just stop the review here.

Your mileage may vary. It’s not a terrible film. I just hated it.

HAUS VERDICT: Horribly depressing. 

See what the other half thinks: Parsi’s Review.