Director: Seth Gordon
Screenplay: Michael Markowitz, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein
Starring: Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell, Kevin Spacey, Jamie Foxx, Julie Bowen, Ioan Gruffudd
One-sentence summary: Nick, Dale and Kurt are three friends whose irritation with the titular horrible bosses has gotten to the point where they plot to kill each other's bosses.
Review: In my opinion, comedy is the toughest genre to get right. Actors whose careers are built primarily on dramatic roles aren't always funny, but comedic actors usually kill when it comes to doing dramatic roles. And yet we revere dramatic roles and relegate comedy to an afterthought. There's a lot that goes into comedy that doesn't always go into drama. It's easy to force yourself to cry and elicit some form of sympathy/empathy from the audience, but it's far more difficult to make them laugh. Everyone's comedic sensibilities are different! I can agree with you that the monologue from the mother in Precious is incredibly sad, but I'm not going to agree with you when you say that The Hangover is one of the funniest movies ever.
Horrible Bosses had it made with the cast. How you can put all of these actors together, even bit parts by Julie Bowen and Ioan Gruffudd, and make a mediocre movie seems impossible. And yet... something felt off about Horrible Bosses when things started getting out of hand. The characters, particularly Dale (Charlie Day), were more annoying than funny (though Jason Bateman played the straight man to a T, as he always does; see Arrested Development). I suddenly felt like I didn't care whether they were going to escape from the situation unscathed, I just wanted the movie to end. This was a complete reversal from the beginning when you see exactly how bad their bosses are; I felt a growing sense of irritation, akin to how I felt when we started seeing exactly how terrible Umbridge is in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. It's not hard to identify with characters whose bosses make their jobs completely miserable.
And yet...
To be honest, I think what I find funny in a comedy movie is when you can find the humor in the ordinary, and you don't have to raise the stakes and end up having three characters engage in a car chase with a man trying to kill them. Horrible Bosses is one of those kinds of comedy movies, and it got to the point where it was simply too much for me.
What I did like about the movie was the writing--or rather, the ad-libbing. The cast plays off each other beautifully, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that over half of the dialogue was unscripted. It just sounds off-the-cuff, and that makes it all the more entertaining. There aren't any quotes from the movie that'll end up in the public lexicon of funny movie lines, but it's still entertaining nonetheless to see Nick, Dale and Kurt trying to figure out Strangers on a Train.
I'm actually curious to see how people react to the sexual harrassment Dale's boss inflicts on him; will a majority of men who see it think it's really hot that Jennifer Aniston plays a nymphomaniac dentist? (I think they will.) What would it have been like if the sexes were reversed? Would it be as funny? And perhaps more importantly, what does it say about the social standards in our society when sexual harrassment is played for laughs and it would likely be approved by a majority of the male audience? The movie lampshades this when Nick and Kurt downplay Dale's troubles, which comforts me to a degree that the writers recognized this issue. If nothing else, at least Horrible Bosses brings up an interesting thought experiment for those who happen to find it.
Final word: Horrible Bosses will likely be found hilarious by those who share its brand of humor, but unfortunately, I'm not one of those people.
No comments:
Post a Comment