Horrible idea but this movie is boss

Horrible Bosses, as unpromising as anything, barely took six minutes to make me laugh and subsequently earns high credit and praise. This is a sophisticated piece of work concocted and brought to life by a team of dedicated professionals.

I was especially impressed with Colin Farrell whose depiction of a cocaine addict is a spot-on work of art. The calibre of talent that got involved in this unkind masterpiece is amazing. Jennifer Aniston might get herself cast for any dime-a-dozen rom-com but Donald Sutherland and Kevin Spacey? If you really want a master class in acting, study Spacey.

Also, the writing absolutely follows the three-act formula to a tee. If there was a master template in plot structure and character development then it would be based on this.

Keep in mind that following the rules doesn’t necessarily make it a good movie or even a movie worth watching. The storytelling is brilliantly economical and it’s awful to think that it might encourage some to follow this film as an example to follow.

It’s pretty much all the way over the top. Sure, it’s funny but it’s still a reprehensible film with a reprehensible premise with reprehensible characters but what does that really matter?

It’s more than mildly offensive that there is an extended subplot that makes fun of Dale for being sexually harassed by Julia. At one point, she even drugs him and then poses him in a series of provocative pictures as a kind of emotional blackmail, forcing him to be intimate with her or she will expose him for already seeming to be intimate with her.

He calls it rape and she mocks him by calling him Jodie Foster, who won an Oscar for The Accused about a rape victim. Cue the laughter? I think not. Sexual assault should never be the joke.

Really, that’s just offence created by the advertising and the trailer. If there was no marketing machine and everyone found out for themselves about Dale’s ignobility then there would at least be a different kind of controversy.

Nick (Jason Bateman), Dale (Charlie Day), and Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) are a bunch of chums who get together every night to drink and talk ill of their employers. The entire audience is meant to immediately relate to the experience of having a horrible boss. There really should be a line in the sand where praise stops and scorn begins. This film has horrible implications for what it proposes in a fictional construct.

Nick works in finance with Dave (Kevin Spacey) above him and he’s in constant servitude to this manipulative egomaniacal power-tripper. Dale is a dental assistant to Julia (Jennifer Aniston) and constantly has to defend himself against her unwanted sexual advances. Kurt really likes his job at an industrial company, but only before his boss Jack (Donald Sutherland) dies and leaves the business to his son Bobby (Colin Farrell), a colossal jerk and aggravating agitator.

At one point, things get so bad that they start thinking the unthinkable: wouldn’t their lives be better if their bosses weren’t alive?

They bring in a ‘murder consultant’ named Jones (Jamie Foxx) who prompts them with the concept of killing each other’s boss in order to get away with the crimes. Have you ever seen Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train or Danny Devito’s Throw Momma from the Train? Well, it’s the same idea but with less gravitas than the former and less black humour than the latter. This one is played out as a straight-up comedy of errors and it works pretty well.

I have to admit that the taut writing, directing and editing kept this thing as interesting as anything by Terry Gilliam except that your mind is engaged instead of just your eyes. I laughed and enjoyed myself immensely. It’s hard to imagine anything this horrible being so good, but it really is.