By Patricia Ducey. Horrible Bosses, is not, well, horrible – it’s what I call a Friday Night Movie, one best seen, if at all, after Happy Hour with your work chums in a theater filled with other people who have done the same. Laughter is infectious, and a slight buzz often helps that along. A way-too-serious and gross first half gives way to some real laughs in the second half, and the ingenious script does at times truly surprise and delight. But Bosses never does rise above a grade of ‘C,’ due to its 3-4 rating on the Apatow Scale (zero being no F-bombs or raunchiness; 5 being F-bombs/raunchiness equal to an Apatow movie). Most of the time, the raunchiness here is just a distraction from dumb writing, as becomes apparent.
Hapless, harried office workers Nick (Jason Bateman), Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) and Dale (Charlie Day) work in their own private hells, victims of their unbearable bosses: Kevin Spacey as Nick’s manipulative, Machiavellian boss at a financial firm, Colin Farrell (whose physical transformation from sexy Irishman to cheeseball cokehead is astounding) as Kurt’s bete noir manager at a chemical company, and Jennifer Aniston as Dale’s sex-obsessed, harassing boss/dentist.
After a few beers one night, the trio decides that a well planned murder of these three villains is the answer to their problems, so they head downtown to the nastiest bar they can find to hire a hit man. There they find Jamie Foxx, a “murder consultant” who gives them a general outline of a plan (cribbed from movie plots) in exchange for five grand. Later, after discussion and soul searching, they hit upon a variation of the consultant’s plan and decide to forge ahead. After all, they have watched enough movies and Law & Order episodes to guarantee they can concoct a foolproof crime … or crimes! In other words, they are idiots – and with reasoning like theirs, you can guess that all does not proceed smoothly. Soon the guys are running into and from cops, killers, and overly amorous women. Hilarity occasionally ensues. Continue reading LFM Review: Horrible Bosses