At some point, we’ve all thought about offing the boss. Most of us keep these thoughts to ourselves and settle for bitching about deadlines with colleagues. This film tells the story of what happens when you decide to follow through with your fantasies.
Friends Nick (Jason Bateman), Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) and Dale (Charlie Day) are average guys struggling to work for The Man. Nick’s a financier struggling to earn a promotion from Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey), who makes him work over the weekend and drink obscene amounts of scotch at 8 in the morning. Dale is an assistant to psychotic dentist Dr Julia Harris (a brunette Jennifer Aniston). And Kurt’s otherwise likeable boss dies, leaving him at the mercy of the deceased’s cocaine-snorting, sex addict son Bobby Pellitt (Colin Farrell, in a creepy comb-over wig). Between them, they concoct a plan to kill one another’s insane employers, but not before seeking the advice of murder consultant Dean Jones (Jamie Foxx).
Poorly paced, and too often too absurd to hold your attention, the film is nevertheless not without its charms. If the Aniston and Farrell characters are simply too extreme to be believable, Bateman and Day do their level best to keep it grounded. It’s Spacey, though, who (yet again) steals the show, with some delightful character tics.
In troubled times like these, taking out the boss could almost be seen as a less riskier proposition than looking for a new job (at one point, an old school friend of the trio pops us, having lost his job at Lehmans, and reminding us, somewhat clunkily, that a bad boss beats having no boss). And while Horrible Bosses won’t improve your own daily grind, it might make you grateful it’s not worse.
