Horrible Bosses opens with Nick (Jason Bateman) reminiscing about a grandmother who died penniless. She had the balls, so-to-speak, never to take shit from anybody. It left her soulfully satisfied and little else. Nick proceeds to tell us that he’s done nothing but take shit for years, the smart man’s gambit, and this is payday, grandma was a moron. And then Nick watches gaping slack-jawed as his rightful promotion goes to the boss (Kevin Spacey). Insult becomes injury as boss Dave blackmails Nick into continuing the shitwork by blackballing him from any useful recommendation in the field. And in five minutes of screen time Nick’s smart man gambit turns into checkmate for the boss. Horrible.
Jason Bateman only knows how to play one character, this one – the frustrated workaholic everyman. But he plays it well and as his looks are not as intimidating as those of, say, Ryan Reynolds, Jason is more easily relatable. He’s perfect for this role.
The checkmate moment is when I fell in love with Horrible Bosses – you don’t even have to have a bad boss to know what it is to be overworked and underappreciated. Work is defined by what you are willing to do for money. Those of you who would do it anyway? I applaud you and hate you at the same time. For me, a good work day is not being humiliated. Is this my fault? My formative work years were paralleled by “Melrose Place,” in which I learned that even if you half-ass it, you should still be running a Fortune 500 company before the age of 30. No, no. We knew that wasn’t real. When you go to work, you know the Melrose experience ain’t happenin’. Even if your formative years were spent in Dickensian England, odds are you’d still know what it is to be more than “just grateful to have a job.” Horrible Bosses is the comedy that speaks to all of us in that demographic.
Kevin Spacey has always been better at bad than good. We learned this in the mid-90s when in a one-year period, Kevin played awesome villains in Se7en, Swimming with Sharks and The Usual Suspects and a mushy good guy in Outbreak. Of those four, can you name the film that sucked? Hint: it wasn’t good. It’s delightful to find a casting director who recognizes this.
Wait a minute, I haven’t even gotten to the other pair of bad bosses yet, each of whom is a gem, too. Good boss Jack (Donald Sutherland) dies suddenly, leaving Jason Sudeikis at the mercy of Bobby (Colin Farrell, awesome here), Jack’s embezzling, coke-sniffing abusive tool of a son. And then there’s predatory dentist Julia (Jennifer Aniston) constantly molesting Dale (Charlie Day). I know, I know, part of me is saying, “sexually harassed by Jennifer Aniston, where’s the bad?” too. But if you’re old enough to ponder the question, you’re old enough to realize unwanted sexual advances are awful whether they come from a Playboy centerfold, the Queen of England, or the slimy neighbor on “Aqua Teen Hunger Force.”
That all is just the set-up. By the time we get to weird ex-con Jamie Foxx and the Strangers on a Train plot, well, Horrible Bosses is a lot of fun and a great backhanded reminder that sometimes no job is better than a bad job. That’s the message I needed to hear most of all.
Rated R, 98 Minutes
D: Seth Gordon
W: Michael Markowitz, John Francis Daley & Jonathan M. Goldstein
Genre: Revenge fantasy
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: People who hate their jobs
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Bosses, horrible or otherwise
