‘Horrible Bosses’

Director: Seth Gordon

Starring: Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Kevin Spacey

3.5/5 popcorns

A trio of relative unknowns take the lead in the star-studded black comedy ‘Horrible Bosses.’

Hailing mainly from television, Jason Bateman (‘Arrested Development’), Charlie Day (‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’) and Jason Sudeikis (‘Saturday Night Live’) are uniformly terrific as the film’s miserable employees, acting opposite their more famous counterparts.

With two Oscars, three Golden Globes and numerous blockbusters between them, Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston and Colin Farrell play the bosses in the film, willingly taking a backseat to the still up-and-coming comic talents. Accompanying the trio of superstars is Oscar winner Jamie Foxx, who plays the smallest role of any top-billed star.

Nick (Bateman), Dale (Day) and Kurt (Sudeikis) are all stuck in jobs with bosses from hell. Nick’s boss, Dave Harken (Spacey), is a veritable psychopath, claiming to own Nick’s career and aiming to make him completely subservient. Dental assistant Dale merely wanted to be a good husband since he was a kid, but his sexually abusive, man-eating boss, Julia (Aniston), makes that quite difficult. Kurt idolized his former boss, Jack (Donald Sutherland), but when Jack dies of a heart attack and leaves the business to his idiotic cokehead son, Bobby (Farrell), Kurt feels just as helpless as his pals.

Depressed and somewhat hopeless, the three conspire to kill their respective bosses. Designating themselves to someone else’s boss to reduce the level of suspicion, all three equally contribute to the constant bungling of murder attempts with their ridiculous antics. Nick is too sensitive, Kurt is too sex-crazed, and Dale is too stupid — a perfect team of lovable imbeciles.

A blend of ‘9 to 5’ and ‘Office Space,’ Seth Gordon’s film isn’t meant for young teenagers or for those who crave relentless slapstick and meaningless crudity. Instead, ‘Horrible Bosses’ is tailored to an audience of thinking adults who may empathize with the three tortured leads.

Assembling a great cast isn’t very hard when you’ve got great material, but every star in ‘Horrible Bosses’ fits eerily well into their roles. Bateman is at his best playing the straight man, Day is in his comfort zone as a slightly out-of-control moron with a heart, and Sudeikis embodies the everyman charm.

Though they settle for less than half the screen time of the leads, the bosses prove to be the real miracles of the casting. Two-time Academy Award winner Spacey stuns with his diabolic performance as Bateman’s psychotic superior; an incredibly entertaining Aniston pushes her comedic boundaries; and Farrell, the funniest actor in the movie, channels the jumpy charisma that made him so effective in 2008 black comedy ‘In Bruges.’

Like so many comedies with plots predicated on violence, ‘Horrible Bosses’ falls victim to the classic third-act breakdown. The film snowballs into a mess, the characters’ charm is mostly lost with the increasingly ridiculous action scenes.

Despite a third act that hardly equals the original, rich comedy of the first two acts, ‘Horrible Bosses’ fully exercises its potential with a great cast and an abundance of laughs. Sometimes, that’s all we’re entitled to ask for.

smlittma@syr.edu

Published on July 19, 2011 at 12:00 pm