Review of Horrible Bosses (2011) by Brevin S — 27 Dec 2014

My beef with modern, average Joe comedies is that the main character(s) are, by the end, not morally corrupted. In Horrible Bosses, our three good-hearted, hard-working heroes (Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day) each want to kill their, well, horrible bosses (Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell, and Jennifer Aniston, respectively).

I liked the premise. It has opportunity for delicious black comedy. How will our heroes hide the bodies? Can they kill a boss cleanly? What would they do, when they see that someone witnessed the murder? Oh, wait.

I forgot to connect the first sentence to all of this. Horrible Bosses is ultimately framed as that Hangover-influenced average Joe comedy. *SPOILER* By the end of the movie, none of our heroes partake in anything that I mentioned.

They don't kill anyone. The heroes stay heroes, and the villains stay villains. What a waste. The one joke, also a point of plot progression, that I really liked was when two of the bosses incidentally crossed paths during the murder plot.

Otherwise, the best jokes come from the usual interactions between the quirky-normal heroes and the quirky-abnormal non-heroes (including Jamie Foxx as an assassin-but-not-actually). Everyone in the cast was great, and they gave it their all.

I would love to see them in a movie with more ambition or just a darker edge.