Superior stupidity

This was published 8 years ago

Superior stupidity

An A-list cast is left floundering by a childish script.

An actor's life is a thing of infinite variety. Here's Kevin Spacey taking time away from his job as artistic director of the Old Vic to do a turn in Hollywood's latest gross-out comedy.

He's also been appearing on stage as Richard III - a performance that could well have informed his performance here as a psychotic office tyrant. He may even have treated the role as a rehearsal for Richard. I hope so. To survive this script, you'd have needed something to take your mind off it.

Lobe rider ... Jennifer Aniston's dentist tries to get a piece of Charlie Day's Dale.


At least he has company. The cast of Horrible Bosses includes Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx, Donald Sutherland and Welsh actor Ioann Gruffudd. Most of them claim to have been seduced by the hilarity of the dialogue, although the film's box-office potential is likely to have offered an even more powerful incentive. It's aiming to out-gross - in every sense of the term - recent efforts such as The Hangover II and Bridesmaids. And while it probably won't succeed, it's not doing too badly, proving that in this genre it's impossible to fail by trying too hard.

Let's start with Aniston, cast as a sexually predatory dentist who's trying to blackmail her male assistant (Charlie Day) into having sex with her in the dental chair, preferably on top of an unconscious patient. Aniston has chosen to wear a brunette wig for the role, saying she couldn't possibly have played it looking like herself. Whatever helps to get you through, I guess. A more effective form of camouflage has been adopted by Colin Farrell, wearing a paunch, a comb-over and a creepy moustache. Much braver is Ioann Gruffudd, who doesn't disguise himself at all - even though he has every excuse. He's playing a character who earns his living by catering to people who like to be urinated on. To my relief - and maybe his - his only scene is terminated when he's told his services aren't going to be required after all. It's the film's one moment of restraint.


The action revolves around the misadventures of three friends, Nick (Jason Bateman), Dale (Day) and Kurt (Jason Sudeikis). These dumb but supposedly decent characters are pushed to the point of homicidal irrationality by the bullying of their bosses. Nick is being victimised by Spacey, who is subjecting him to daily bouts of psychological torture, threatening to ruin his career if he ever tries to resign. Dale is exhausted by having to ward off Aniston's advances and Kurt is having to contend with Farrell as a coke-snorting party boy who's taken control of the company for which Kurt has worked happily for years.

With the help of some dodgy advice from Dean ''MF'' Jones (Foxx), a former con, they hatch a triple-murder plot. It's inspired by the Hitchcock film Strangers on a Train and it hinges on the premise that they will avoid detection by killing one another's bosses.

Naturally enough, the bumbling about that flows from this plan soon stymies any possibility that it's going to be carried out. At the same time, the trio's hysteria mounts in a manner conspicuously designed to conjure up comparisons with the panic experienced by the boys in The Hangover.

The director of Horrible Bosses, Seth Gordon, is best known for his much-praised documentary King of Kong (2007), about a couple of middle-aged obsessives addicted to the outmoded arcade game Donkey Kong. Sudeikis, a Saturday Night Live regular, takes care of most of the scatological stuff but the SNL influence doesn't stop there. The trio's misguided attempts to prepare for their crime by casing the houses of their targets have the rhythms and exaggerations of sketch comedy and the same broad-brush style is applied to the script's rudimentary efforts at characterisation. Dale is the jittery one. Kurt is the fun lover and Nick is the sobersides - a workaholic Prius driver who hasn't had a girlfriend in years. In fact, it's a Prius and Gregory, its Indian-accented navigation system, that provide the script with its only flashes of originality.

It would be nice to see Bateman in something better. His self-deprecating charm has had him propping lesser but louder talents for a long time. Habitually cast as the guy who didn't get the girl, he's finally being given the breaks he's deserved but he's wasted here.

It's Aniston, however, who suffers most from the script's desperate urge to get down and dirty. Her dentist is the most prurient of creations. To describe her, some of the film's fans have disinterred the word ''nympho''. The film's ads are settling for ''sex-crazed man-eater''. She wants sex and she wants it now, while poor, put-upon Dale yearns to go home to his fiancee, who's chronically dim but a nice girl.

I can understand why rom-com's princess should want a change now and again but next time, Aniston might give some thought to playing with the grown-ups.


Directed by Seth Gordon

Rated MA, 97 minutes

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