In Review: Horrible Bosses

Horrible Bosses, Seth Gordon, 2011

The Gist

Darkly humorous and well-cast, Horrible Bosses does not stray far from the humor and feel of the original Hangover. The dangers of feeling borrowed from other comedy films are easily remedied by the great acting of the cast and the great chemistry between the main characters.

The Good

• good acting from Spacey and Aniston
• smart script with a great cast and great chemistry
• feels quite original in its own right

The Bad

• feels to have borrowed from other comedies
• the ending felt so Deus Ex Machina, cliched

Synopsis

Nick Hendricks (Bateman) works with a psychotic boss (Spacey) who tricked him to doing things for a promotion he never intend to give. Dale Arbus (Day) who dreams of nothing but to be a husband to his fiancee, works  as a dental assistant to a sexually offending boss (Aniston) who manipulates him to allow her sexual advances until his marriage. Kurt Buckman (Sudeikis) was better off compared to his two friends and works as an account manager for a chemical company with a loving boss who has a cokehead son. Trouble is, his boss just died and his son now runs the company as he would an ATM machine. Dissatisfied with their bosses, the three conspires a plan to rid each other of their bosses permanently. The realization that they don't exactly know how to kill someone sparks a series of events that lead them to one disaster after another.

Hangover from Hangover

I was only so surprised to find out that the movie was not directed by Todd Philips, director of The Hangover. At the end of the movie, I was like, man that feels so much like The Hangover. Perhaps, I'll blame it on the great chemistry between Bateman, Sudeikis, and Day. The premise is completely different from The Hangover though. Here, they intend to kill their bosses, while The Hangover is merely about bachelors having fun. However, both movies have those plans ending up going awry and one thing leads to another before a very simple solution was there anyway. Comparisons aside, I can't complain much about the premise or the plot of Horrible Bosses. It's definitely funnier than Crazy, Stupid, Love, and definitely crazier and stupider.

Quick, Fast, Dirty

I don't really love Jennifer Aniston, but my goodness, she was so good in this film. I'm actually raving mad for her performance. Also, Spacey. Man, you will just hate him for being the psycho that he is in that film. Farrell was a bit on the uh huh side of town and pales compared to Spacey and Aniston, but I blame it on his screen time, it was pretty short compared to everyone else. As mentioned above, the chemistry between Sudeikis, Day, and Bateman is great. Jamie Foxx also did fantastic here and his character is one of the movie's surprising comic reliefs outside the three musketeers. That said, everyone's acting was in check and the script is witty with compliments of course to the execution.

The narrative is typical, nothing fancy. Has a narrator to begin and a narrator to end it. And speaking of endings, man, I hated the ending, albeit not completely. It was typical and kind of cliched and kind of made it fizzled, but good thing, a greater part of the ending was good, the resolution was just so-so. And also, as far as pacing is concerned, the film was actually quick in telling its story. It wouldn't really feel like a 2-hour film once the credits start rolling and you wouldn't feel that you've wasted your time watching washed up jokes. Couldn't remark anything special about the cinematography.

Apart from the typical formula for being a comedy: exaggeration, crude jokes, a stupid character who messes up everything, I also am not satisfied with how they portrayed women. In the movie, women were portrayed to be either clueless or horny or clueless and horny. So if you're dating a feminist, not a very good date movie this one. Nevertheless, it's a movie to destroy a date nor one to merit getting one into your bed.

My verdict:

A passing and recommended mark of 4/5.