Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey) is a Total F***ing Asshole. We know this because a caption tells us so (minus the asterisks), but it’s pretty clear anyway. He plays elaborate mind-games to humiliate his assistant Nick (Jason Bateman) into admitting he was two minutes late to work, then pours Nick a glass of Scotch at eight in the morning – Nick only accepts because he assumes Harken is having one too – forces him to drink it anyway, then makes public reference to his “drinking problem”. Bobby Pellitt (Colin Farrell), on the other hand, is the Dipshit Cokehead Son. Sleazy and unreasonable, he inherits the company where Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) works then proceeds to run it into the ground. As for Dr. Julia Harris (Jennifer Aniston), she’s an Evil Crazy Bitch, constantly harassing her dental assistant Dale (Charlie Day) for sex, even though Dale is devoted to his fiancιe. Dr. Julia disrobes provocatively and wants Dale to do it right in the office, using an anaesthesised patient for a bed. “You know, yours doesn’t sound so bad,” observe Nick and Kurt when the three men meet to whine about their horrible bosses.
Whining only gets you so far, though – and the trio of oppressed employees slowly start to think about a more permanent solution. Initially, the notion of killing their bosses is just a bad joke. Then, being good middle-class drones, they think about outsourcing, looking for a hitman in the classified ads – alas, “wet work” turns out to mean something else altogether – and visiting seedy bars where ruthless (read: black) killers are likely to be hanging out. Then comes the brainwave of killing each other’s bosses, to avoid suspicion – though the trio briefly argue over whether it derives from Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train or the other one with Danny DeVito.
The trio argue over everything, which is one reason Horrible Bosses is so funny. They argue over how to find an address, the efficacy of using their sleeves for gloves (to avoid fingerprints), whether the signal should be one honk of the horn or four honks. They’re forever bickering and talking at once, like a verbal Three Stooges. Kurt insists he’ll be raped just as much as Nick if/when they go to prison, and asks Dale to adjudicate. They argue over whether “bend her over a barrel and show her the 50 states” is a well-known phrase (Kurt says it is; the others insist they’ve never heard of it). Even in the middle of a car chase, they’re babbling and yammering.
The main reason why Horrible Bosses works is simply this, however: its heroes get distracted, but the film itself doesn’t. This is rare in today’s comedy climate, dominated as it is by the influence of Judd Apatow. I remember watching The 40-Year-Old Virgin – the first big Apatow hit, back in 2005 – and wondering why it was taking two hours to relate a simple comedy plot, and why five minutes of that was being spent on a needless scene of Steve Carell waxing his chest hair. No such self-indulgence here; Horrible Bosses is bright, frantic farce, never taking its eye off the main plot – and though it’s dirty and profane and not for kids, it’s never gross for its own sake, nor does it stop the plot dead for ‘outrageous’ antics in the manner of Get Him to the Greek or Hot Tub Time Machine.
It’s a good summer for behaving badly at the Cineplex. Mel Gibson is Mel Gibson in The Beaver while Cameron Diaz extorts money from parents, poisons a rival teacher’s apple and reverses her car at full speed while puffing on a ciggie in Bad Teacher – but even she can’t compare with Harken, who won’t let Nick say goodbye to his dying grandma (“Gam-Gam”) and smilingly explains that “I’m having my teeth whitened on Tuesday” so he, Nick, has to work all through the weekend. Then there’s Farrell with paranoid look and ridiculous comb-over, and Aniston light-years away from her pinched, needy persona – hanging out with Bateman seems to have worked for her; she was also great in The Switch last year – as the randy dentist in (nothing but) white smock and panties. The evil bosses are the icing on the cake but our three heroes add a solid foundation of nervous energy, especially Day whose voice tends to spike up an octave when he’s stressed, like Lou Costello’s (he ends the film on a high note, literally). Not to mention the Lehman Brothers dude now reduced to sexual propositions – it’s a recession movie – or the Indian guide on Sat-Nav, or Jamie Foxx as Motherf***er (nι Dean) Jones. In these slapdash post-Hangover times, Horrible Bosses may be as good as it gets.
DIRECTED BY Seth Gordon
STARRING Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day
US 2011 98 mins.
