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Horrible Bosses, in my opinion, is the real sequel to The Hangover. It captures the same loose spirit and outlandish antics of that film and is just as hysterically mental without getting insincere and insulting toward its audience. It’s also a simple concept – three friends try to kill their bosses – that is compounded by a spiraling of cause-and-effect events of one out of control night. Full of straightforward and incredibly funny performances, Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day’s skewed-logic gets as twisted as a winding road as they try to free themselves from their work-related frustrations.
Spurred on by a drunken conversation, three friends decide the only way to survive in daily life is to kill their annoying bosses. Buttoned-down office slave and executive, Nick Hendricks (Jason Bateman), finds himself out-smarted for a work promotion by his own boss, the tight-assed Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey). Dorky dental assistant Dale Arbus (Charlie Day) finds himself facing sexual harassment issues on a daily basis thanks to his sexually-overcharged maneater of a boss, Dr. Julia Harris (Jennifer Aniston). And womanizer Kurt Buckman (Jason Sudeikis) finds himself insulted by the barrage of ridiculous requests from his new boss, the cocaine-fueled Bobby Pellitt (Colin Farrell).
Desperate and offended, the friends seek out the guidance from their $5,000 murder consultant, one MF Jones (Jamie Foxx), and try to handle the assignation of the pains in their collective asses on their own. While consequences certainly spiral out of control, the story never once loses focus in its goal of making audience members laugh at and laugh with. The extremes of their adventures aren’t entirely gratuitous, but they are hysterical and, watching Sudekis stick his boss’s toothbrush down his butt crack, not without identifiable merit.
Directed by Seth Gordon (of the underrated Four Christmases) and written by John Francis Daley, Johnathan M. Goldstein and Michael Markowitz, Horrible Bosses works due to its handling of the absurd in daily life. Sure, the bosses become cartoonish by the end of the picture, but the muscled performances from Sudekis, Bateman, and especially Day keep the picture from resting solely upon a predictably moronic, vulgar and juvenile storyline. The chemistry working behind the three leading men (all earned their comedic wings on television by the way) is insanely natural and well-crafted making this film scary in its relatability and a whole lot of popcorn fun.
With frenetic lines harkening back to Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train and scenes of terrific improvisation, Horrible Bosses survives its primal urges to kill thanks to a range of performances that span the gulf between normal and absurd. It’s not the smartest of comedies and it doesn’t have to be due to those fun performances. You might feel a little drag in the pacing from time to time (and maybe that’s a gentle narrative tug telling you that the writers didn’t go far enough with the consequences of their killing-spree), but Horrible Bosses energy as a twisted comedy is enough to never overstay its welcome.
MPAA Rating: R For crude and sexual content, pervasive language and some drug material
