What a cast there is. Jason Bateman, Jason Sedeikus and Charlie Day are the aggrieved employees; Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell and Jennifer Aniston are the horrible bosses.
A couple of quicky cameos to really enjoy are given by Donald Sutherland and, that TV man himself, Bob Newhart. Better check out two other small appearances from two large guys: Wendell Pierce of "Treme" and "Wire" fame, and Ron White, the naughty cigar-smoking, whiskey-chugging, down home, stand-up comic, aka "Tater Salad." Not enough of any of these guys, for my money. To bring you up to speed on just how horrible the bosses really are: Kevin Spacey, sure enough, is Atilla the Hun in a suit. Full-bore, he gives Bateman the What-For. (Nobody better than K-Pax Kevin doing a comic badass boss.) Colin Farrell inherits the position of Sedeikus's boss. He's a complete jerk of a different stripe, even though his father, played by Sutherland, is the only good manager to be seen.
Keeping things interesting, Jennifer Aniston, the local dentist, is a sex-hound in the office and is always hitting-on her dental assistant, played by Day, who's engaged to another woman he loves. He's trying like hell to walk a perilous path of fidelity. I'm sure there was a long line of men waiting to play Mr. Day's part when the scripts when out. After all this sets up in "Horrible Bosses," the film slows a bit, and becomes less funny as the three guys try to bring off the demise of the three bosses, although there were still gobs of guffaws for the assembled crowd throughout the screening I attended. Had the script distributed its humor more among the smaller roles, instead of leaving so much to the aggrieved losers, "Bosses" would've REALLY sailed. In this regard, I'm thinking: budget. Be advised that language is quite brisk and, shall we say, unrestrained, and comes to your ear in a deep blue. A cast member who has as much to do with all the blue chatter during the one hundred minutes of mirth is Ms. Aniston. I wonder if she had to spend prep time in a Southern California pool hall to learn some of the words she employs. I read an online news item a few hours before seeing "Horrible Bosses." It speculated Jenn might be baring, totally, her upper torso in this photoplay. Every dude I saw in the cinema seemed ready for that possibility but, as I had quietly predicted to myself, disappointment ensued. Although, I'm sure sales of the DVD release of "Horrible Bosses," later on, would get really brisk should a film editor leave something in the film that I didn't see tonight on the big screen, and certain PR firms and web sites were to leak the fact that such a dermatological display was on the DVD, only. One can only hope. As with us all, Aniston is aging, slightly, and could be opening the door in order to slip toward more edgy comedy as she directly confronts her Middle Years, head-on. She sure does have the chops for it.
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Gary Chew can be reached
at garychew@comcast.net, |
