Easily my favourite comedy of 2011, with Crazy, Stupid, Love. coming a close second. The film is about three guys whose jobs are made hell by their bosses. They decide to kill them in a "Strangers on a train" style, where one kills another's boss so it can't be traced back to the employee. I wasn't sure what to expect from the cast that includes Kevin Spacey, Jason Bateman, Colin Farrell, Donald Sutherland, Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Aniston. Each fine actors but how would they fair in this film? Amazingly is how. Colin Farrell is almost unrecognizable as one of the bosses and Kevin Spacey is great as usual. However the stand out performance of the film is Jennifer Aniston. She plays a dentist, the boss of Dale (Charlie Day) and she is sexually harassing him. She really takes the role and plays it to perfection. Dale is her shy assistant who is engaged to Stacy (Lindsay Sloane). He is faithful to her and resists all advances from his over sexed boss. It is not a role we are used to seeing her play but it is a perfect performance. Another great performance was Jamie Foxx the murder consultant they hire. Horrible Bosses is a great comedy, almost a perfect comedy. The only flaw for me was it was all tied up a little too neatly. I saw the ending coming before it happened and it would have been nice to have an ending a little more surprising. Having said that I can't imagine how it could have been ended differently. The film doesn't have to resort to crude gags and just lets the script and performances of the cast tell the story. This works so well and full credit to the writers for a great comedy.
We have all had them at some point in our life. You may even have one now. That’s right, I am talking about horrible bosses. So I was more than happy to go see Horrible Bosses, mostly to get suggestions on how to treat my subordinates. What? I never said that I was a great boss. But enough about me, the movie is about three friends whose superiors are making their lives unbearable, so they decide to murder their horrible bosses.
The three friends:
Nick Hendricks (Jason Bateman) has spent years being the dedicated, hard-working employee. He is the first to arrive at work and the last to leave. But for some reason his boss, the company president, Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey) feels the need to torment him on a daily basis. The one thing that has kept Nick going was the promotion to Vice President of Sales that his boss has been telling him that he would get. But when the day comes Dave decides that he will absorb the VP of Sales position within his own.
Dale Arbus (Charlie Day) is a caring dental hygienist who loves his job, with the one exception of his boss Dr. Julia Harris D.D.S. (Jennifer Aniston) who sexually harrasses him constantly. Now, personally, if I had a boss that looked like his boss she could sexually harass me all she wanted and I would be begging for overtime. However Dale is engaged to a wonderful woman, Stacy (Lindsay Sloane), and Dr. Harris demands that either Dale sleeps with her by the end of the week or else she will tell Stacy that Dale has been sleeping with her. Dr. Harris even has incriminating photos that she took of herself and Dale in questionable poses (of course he was unconscious during dental surgery when the pictures were taken but that’s beside the point).
Kurt Buckman (Jason Sudeikis) is an accountant at Pellit & Sons Chemical Plant. He’s dedicated, hard-working and actually loves his job and boss. But when his boss Jack Pellit (Donald Sutherland) suddenly passes away, Jack’s deranged coke-head son, Bobby (Colin Farrell) takes over and all he cares about is making as much money possible until he runs the company into the ground.
Now you may be asking “Why don’t they just quit their jobs?” They thought about that but then they bump into an old High School buddy of theirs, Kenny Sommerfeld (P.J. Byrne), and they see first-hand how hard it is to find a job.
The decision to murder:
Dale thought he had a fantastic plan on how to murder their bosses and it was rather inexpensive but that gets flushed down the toilet. Nick and Kurt were pissed at Dale for a while but luckily the GPS navigation system in Kurt’s car leads them to Dean ‘MF’ Jones (Jamie Foxx). Dean becomes their Murder Consultant and he gives them a wealth of information on how to go about getting away with murder, as well as the idea that they should murder each other’s bosses. Thus the three friends embark on an epic adventure to kill each other’s bosses and save the world.. well, at the very least, save their sanity.
The onscreen chemistry between Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day was so amazing you would think they have been a comedy team for years and friends for even longer. It really seemed very genuine. Walking out of the theatre I overheard some people discussing who out of the three main actors did the better job and I have to agree with pretty much what they said. Though they all did great jobs Charlie Day rocked the screen just a little harder than either Jason did.
Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston & Colin Farrell were phenomenal. They brought such unique flair and realism to their characters. Kevin Spacey will always be the worst boss ever, Colin Farrell will always be the guy I want to party with and Jennifer Aniston is the boss I would love to have. I will be honest, I was guilty of type casting Jennifer but after seeing her in this role, I can safely say I have learned my lesson and I will not make that mistake again. (Psst, film industry, you can learn this lesson too).
While the screen time for Donald Sutherland, Jamie Foxx, Julie Bowen, Wendell Pierce, Ron White and Bob Newhart may have been shorter than I would have preferred, those scenes were still great. There’s even a really short scene with Isaiah Mustafa (fun fact: he attended the Seattle Seahawks’ training camp in 2000) and even though he was fully clothed in the scene I swear I heard “Yum” whispered by most of audience.
There were a couple of things in the movie that I felt could have been done better unfortunately to list those parts would be a major spoiler. But overall, the movie delivered what I expected and more. It was consistently funny, relatable, highly enjoyable, clever with some twists I didn’t see coming and all the actors (regardless of screen time) shined brightly as the stars they are.
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