The Sunday Leader By Sumaya Samarasinghe
Stuck in a job you hate? Not so much because you cannot handle it but more for the regularity of a monthly paycheque and the pitiful benefits it offers, why not add to that a nasty and cruel boss and
Horrible Bosses is a movie which has been tailor made just for you and will possibly offer a solution to all your “problems’…Not to be taken seriously of course!
Our three heroes and good buddies, Nick, Dale and Kurt are the endearing victims of their evil superiors. Nick (Jason Bateman) is a manager at a firm and has been led on to think by his corporate sadist maniac of a boss, Dave, played by the great Kevin Spacey; that he is next in line for a promotion.Within the first five minutes of their on screen time together, Dave pulls up Nick for arriving at 6:02a.m. at office instead of 6:00a.m. while forcing him to drink straight up, a full glass of scotch at 8:30 in the morning at work and this of course to refer to Nick’s “drinking problem” during a general staff meeting later in the day. It’s been a long time since we had seen Kevin Spacey in good form.He is capable of portraying such icy violence when he pulls up and humiliates his employees that this role makes us all remember what a great actor he is.
The next nightmare boss is Dr. Julia Harris played by a dark haired Jennifer Anniston as a sex maniac dentist who sexually harasses her dental assistant Dale (Charlie Day) who is engaged to be married.
This is probably the role which will redeem her career after a series of recent mediocre films such as The Bounty Hunter, Love Happens and The Switch.She threatens to tell Dale’s fiancé that they have slept together if he refuses to actually go to bed with her. While resisting vehemently, the poor man’s private parts are sprayed with water,he finds himself locked up in Julia’s room with her wearing nothing under her Doctor’s coat and his neck is regularly licked by his boss!
Our third victim is Kurt. At first he cannot empathise with his two other friends, until his beloved boss played by Donald Sutherland in a cameo role, dies of a heart attack and his company is taken over by his cocaine addicted useless son Bobby (Colin Farrell who is completely unrecognizable and seems to take immense pleasure in acting and looking like a complete loser).
So one day over drinks, Nick, Kurt and Dale all agree how much better their lives would be if their bosses weren’t around anymore. This leads to some hilarious adventures and eventually to a seedy bar where they engage the services of a “murder consultant” Mother****er Jones played by Jamie Foxx.
Jones suggests that they kill each other’s bosses to not arouse the suspicion of the police. Of course it does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that none of our three heroes have a murderous bone in them!
Horrible Bosses is essentially funny, with some really good scenes like when Dale drops thousands of dollars worth of cocaine belonging to Bobby on his carpet while the three buddies were supposed to go on a quiet recce to get to know their future victims habits and surrounding. You find yourself laughing maybe a little embarrassingly at jokes which are sometimes racist and offensive.
And of course the sadistic, sexual harassing and drug addicted bosses are way more interesting that their victims. Anniston, Spacey and Farrell are wickedly funny as these deeply amoral characters who embody the worst straits of human nature.greed, violence, cruelty and a deep disdain and zero respect for other beings.
The plot wasn’t as “dark” as expected. For a dark comedy, why not try The War of the Roses; upto date, no film on divorce in the dark comedy category has ever been able to come to the level of this movie directed by Danny de Vito and starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner.
While Horrible Bosses is raunchy, funny, rude, crude, you name it, a slightly darker edge to its conclusion would have been better. However, while awaiting impatiently for The Hangover II to hit our theatres, Horrible Bosses is not such a bad substitute and provides quite a few good laughs.
