The Best Movies at the Movies: Horrible Bosses

Horrible Bosses is smarter than your average fart-joke comedy. I’m not saying it’s The Hangover, but it reminds me of Men at Work (yes, in the history of movie comedies, these are my two benchmarks …given more time, I could probably come up with better examples). Horrible Bosses stars Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day and is the story of three working-class dudes, all friends, with horrible, bullying, and power-hungry bosses. And rather than look for new jobs, they decide their best option is to kill their current bosses.

If that was the elevator pitch, I can only guess they caught the right guy on the right day who heard it and said, “kill my boss …hmmm, after the meeting I had this morning, I can see that.” And then I wonder if that guys boss read the script, took it as a veiled threat, and green-lighted the project because he was suddenly fearful of his employee.

Hmmm. I wonder.

My 2011 high-water mark for comedy, so far, had been Hall Pass, but Horrible Bosses, with it’s dark sense of humor, jumped past Hall Pass. Where Hall Pass was a bit predictable and also starred Jason Sudeikis, Horrible Bosses has better characters, more stories going on, and better plot twists. With a little more work, in fact, it could’ve turned into a caper ….or a Fletch-type whodunnit.

Jason Bateman waited a long time to  make it – and I’ve been rooting for him ever since his 1980s days on Silver Spoons and It’s Your Move. Now with cult hits Arrested Development and Juno under his belt, I’m happy to see his dry wit showing up in more movies, including the soon-to-be-released The Change-Up where’s he’s the main attraction.

Jason Sudeikis is easily SNL‘s least-ever-likely-to-succeed (I dare you to name any memorable characters he’s played on SNL), but that’s not stopping him from hosting MTV award shows and starring in movies alongside Hollywood a-listers like Owen Wilson and now Kevin Spacey.

And of course, Charlie Day, who most people probably don’t know, yet. He’s the scene stealer in FX’s dark, demented sit-com It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and in Horrible Bosses, Charlie Day is riding his “Charlie” character for all it’s worth. Same character as on his TV show, but slightly smarter. Slightly. And Charlie Day nearly steals the entire movie.

It’s funny. Very funny. It’s good enough to be a date movie. And if you have $9 to spend on a movie ticket, you could do worse.

Go see it. I give it 3 1/2 out of 5 beans.

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