THE THREE STOOGES: a review of "Horrible Bosses"

“HORRIBLE BOSSES”
Story by Michael Markowitz
Screenplay Written by Michael Markowitz and John Francis Daley & Jonathan M. Goldstein
Directed by Seth Gordon
*** (three stars)

While I have not previously mentioned this to a soul, I did house some darkly malicious thoughts concerning a former employer.

Without going into any particulars, this person’s actions towards myself, and the organization at which I was working, created an environment that was nothing less than toxic. During the worst and darkest periods of my tenure, I was truly overcome with feelings that bordered upon paranoia as no one ever truly knew what information about which person was being spread throughout the organization and by whom. Yet we all knew that the person who could put a stop to it all had no interest in achieving that goal whatsoever and for some like myself, we felt that this person was quite possibly gathering more than a fair share of enjoyment from watching us all being consumed with mounting panic. Since exiting and moving onwards with my life, I have wondered just what would I do or say if a spontaneously ran into that former boss in public. The city in which I live is big but not that big, so such a meeting would not be an unrealistic occurrence. Would I walk on by, grit my teeth and share a pleasant word or would I unleash all of the vitriolic misery I feel this person richly deserves? In my fantasies of retribution, I would unleash that aforementioned vitriolic misery with a previously unseen forcefulness that would leave this person an emotionally shattered mess upon the pavement. Dear readers, I pride myself on possessing a very long fuse but I do carry an extremely nasty temper when that fuse is ignited and as far as I am concerned, this person deserves all of my buried rage.

The dark revenge comedy “Horrible Bosses” from Director Seth Gordon spoke to those malicious feelings carried by myself and, I am certain, so many of you fairly well once it found its comedic footing. Honestly, who has not felt horrific feelings towards and employer at one time or another. Handled correctly, this film could have been a wicked R rated experience filled with knowing, perceptive and justifiably nasty humor to make audiences howl in catharsis and employers look over their shoulders. As it stands, the film was pretty good but, I have to tell you that for its first third, I was truly worried as I was not liking the film very much at all. Yet, just at the point that I was a lost ready to give up and just suffer through the remainder, I began to laugh, laugh and laugh harder, longer and more consistently. While “Horrible Bosses” was ultimately not the comedy game changer it could have been, it is funny enough to provide you with much enjoyment.

“Horrible Bosses” opens with another day in the exhaustive treadmill life of Nick Hendricks (Jason Bateman), a financial firm employee constantly under the sadistic thumb of his boss David Harken (Kevin Spacey). The workplace misery continues with the mild-mannered Dale Arbus (Charlie Day), a newly engaged dental assistant who is being sexually harassed by his aggressive boss Dr. Julia Harris (Jennifer Aniston). Finally, we meet the socially conscious yet hopelessly randy accountant Kurt Buckman (Jason Sudekis) who is forced to work under the incompetent, idiotic and cocaine addicted Bobby Pellitt (Colin Farrell).

After yet another horrific day at work, Nick, Dale and Kurt meet and commiserate over drinks and in a moment of inebriated contemplation, Kurt jokingly suggests how wonderful their respective lives would be if all of their bosses no longer existed. While that thought is immediately waved away by Nick and Dale, the seed has effectively been planted. Soon, the trio locates and engages the assistance of an expletive named and self described “murder consultant” (played by Jamie Foxx) who gives them the finer pointers of how they can murder their bosses themselves for the low, low price of $5000 (and a briefcase).

On paper, I would think that the set up of “Horrible Bosses” would make for a most promising escapade that could potentially join the ranks of Director Colin Higgins’ gently feminist workplace revenge fantasy “9 To 5” (1980) and the brilliant cubicle satire of Writer/Director Mike Judge’s “Office Space” (1999). The film also seems to be setting itself up as playing into the 21st century workplace anxieties that are occurring in a recession and people are compelled to keep whatever jobs they have, no matter how miserable they may happen to be and how abusive their work environment are. Unfortunately, “Horrible Bosses” just skates around its own potential by giving a nod to those particular anxieties and just offering sheer entertainment instead of some much needed sharp, satirical bite for the comedy. I suppose that is all well and good, but again, when I am watching a film and can just see how and when the film can take off into the stratosphere, I am curious as to why the filmmakers and creative participants involved cannot see the same potential. To be fair, I have to review what was on the screen, and as previously stated, for the film’s first third or so, the experience of “Horrible Bosses” was just beginning to live up to the first word of its title.

Frankly, while the beginning of “Horrible Bosses” effectively set up the main characters, their respective plights as well as the horrific nature of those titular bosses, I just felt that it was all a tonal mess. I was seriously resisting this movie as its level of vulgarity, something that typically does not offend me, was grating. The amount of profanity felt gratuitous and nearly everything on display felt so forced, that it felt as if the filmmakers were just having the characters say and perform juvenile, puerile acts solely to gain and justify the R rating. Swear words are not funny in and of themselves. There has to be a context, a zest and swing to the language that can make those words so dangerously funny and for a while, I felt as if I were just being assaulted with bad words just because the filmmakers knew they could get away with it.

But mostly, it seemed as if Gordon just did not know exactly what kind of a film he wanted “Horrible Bosses” to be as too many sequences just fell completely out of the realm of possibility. The reason why “9 To 5” and “Office Space” work so well is that each of those films firmly ground themselves in a semblance of recognizable reality so that when the situations grow to outrageous lengths, the comedy is accentuated. If Dabney Coleman’s lecherous, sexist, egotistical, bigoted boss in “9 To 5” for instance, were pitched at cartoon level, no one would have cared a whit about his comeuppance or even laughed very much at it at all. Yet, Coleman made his character of Franklin Hart Jr. extremely tangible and therefore, realistically loathsome. The same can be said for Kevin Spacey’s sadistic Hollywood executive in Writer/Director George Huang’s “Swimming With Sharks” (1995), a character so realistically and manipulatively awful that you are begging to see him receive exactly what is deservedly coming to him. “Horrible Bosses,” on the other hand, begins as an over the top experience and it has nowhere else to go but upwards, almost forcing itself to one-up itself in ludicrousness. That particular tonal quality was something that just tripped Gordon up time and again.

Despite all of the attention heaped upon her, I felt that Jennifer Aniston was the film’s most severe weak link. Not through her performance and obvious enthusiasm to go against her “girl next door” image but from the fact that her character, and every sequence that features her lascivious dentist, is so over the top and out of the realm of anything that could realistically happen, that she never feels remotely real or at least recognizable. Therefore, Dale’s predicament is nothing more than a male cartoon fantasy and Dr. Julia Harris herself is someone who really only exists on the moon. Ultimately, all of it was tiring because it all felt to be so desperate.

Another major problem was that Jason Bateman and Jason Sudekis’ characters are both terribly underwritten and almost interchangeable. If it weren’t for Bateman’s trademark deadpan and Sudekis’ more aggressive qualities, I don’t know if I could have been able to really tell those two apart. Even Kevin Spacey, while cruelly entertaining, isn’t doing anything fresh with this material that he has not already performed to much better effect in Director James Foley’s adaptation of David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross” (1992) and the aforementioned “Swimming With Sharks.” As good as Spacey is in “Horrible Bosses,” he’s just treading water as he cashes another paycheck.

But then, after the fateful meeting with their murder consultant and the trio’s subsequent attempts to gather incriminating evidence upon all of their respective bosses, I began to laugh. And then, I began to laugh more consistently. After a while, I began to think of “Horrible Bosses” as possibly an updated version of an old “Three Stooges” short as these three imbeciles fumbled through one ridiculous mishap after another while growing increasingly irritated with each other. Unlike “The Hangover” (2009), which tried to treat its three leads as affable anti-heroes, “Horrible Bosses” knows fully well that Nick, Kurt and Dale are complete idiots and I began to find myself enjoying the bulk of the film on that level. Many thanks should go towards Charlie Day, whose terrifically reedy, raspy voice hysterically accelerates and increases in volume every time situations are threatening to fly off of the rails. If he was trying (and failing) to slide under a closing garage door, or attempting to contain a sense of coolness while under the extreme effects of inhaling spilled cocaine, Day was easily the film’s comic standout and I look forward to seeing him again, in hopefully better comedies.

While “Horrible Bosses” was not the cathartic comedic release I had hoped for it to be (and nothing for my former employer to worry about), it’s not bad and despite the hefty amount on criticism I held for it, I did enjoy myself for most of the film’s running time. “Horrible Bosses” doesn’t raise any bars or changes any games in the comedy film genre but it did make me laugh often and quite hard and sometimes that’s good enough.