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REVIEW: Horrible Bosses

Posted by under *mixed, Movies |

Horrible Bosses is the new film from Seth Gordon who previously directed the hysterical documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters and the horrendous Vince Vaughn/Reese Witherspoon disaster Four Christmases. The film is carried by a cast of actors mainly known for their television work including Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis and Jennifer Aniston along with Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx in bit parts. The film benefits from the audience’s previously established affection for the main actors. There’s no way this movie would be nearly as watchable with a cast of unknowns.

As the trailer suggests, the movie revolves around a bunch of regular guys (Sudeikis, Day and Bateman) who report to horrible bosses and whose work situations deteriorate to the point that they conspire to kill their superiors. The bosses, played by Spacey, Farrell and Aniston, amount to nothing more than cartoon characters. Farrell plays a bald, cokehead who inherits his father’s business and intends to bleed the company of its profits to pay for his coke habit and move to a tropical paradise. Aniston plays a sexy dentist who sexually harasses Day every chance she gets. Spacey, on the other hand, plays the most twisted of any of the bosses and whose actions really propel movie’s the flimsy plot. Foxx cameos as an ex-con “murder consultant” hired by Sudeikis, Day and Bateman to advise them as they plot their crime.

Horrible Bosses is a huge improvement over Gordon’s Four Christmases, which was just terrible. Unfortunately, Bosses has very few memorable scenes beyond a sequence that revolves around Day accidentally snorting coke. While Horrible Bosses has a few laughs, there are not nearly as many as you might expect from watching the trailers. The movie just never lives up to the sum of its parts. As I said before, even though the film fails to deliver consistently on laughs, it still manages to be fairly watchable due to the likability of Sudiekis, Day and Bateman. Horrible Bosses opens in wide release on July 8th. But you should wait for it to hit Netflix, unless you are someone who believes supporting Jason Bateman films might ultimately result in Arrested Development: The Motion Picture.

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