Funnier than expected

Rating: 8/10 (14 August 2011)

The first question going in the theatre is how these guys are going to justify killing their bosses to themselves and us in a way that doesn't feel like too much of a device. Just as how in Office Space their revenge has to be turned on them to prevent any viewers from getting the wrong idea, this movie had to really win us over on their intentions while also holding back from leading people to the wrong moral conclusions. So it did so by making the bosses incredibly sadistic.
Which is great! The three main characters as television-trained comedy leads works for a sort of small-screen charm and episodic shortsightedness while the three bigger star actors as the bosses get to be Big Personalities. It's surprising how little of the gags in the movie end up being too gimmicky--even the "wet worker" scene, the most disposable in the movie, ends up showcasing just how inept these guys are and justifies their decision that leads them to the character named Mother****er Jones (mrp mrp IMDb guidelines). Even that groan-worthy joke works, partly because of a buildup behind M. Jones' explanation if his name but also because this is just how out-of-their-league the leads are. Also, Jamie Foxx embraces that character and makes it shine.
Everyone seemed to relish their roles. No one the less than Jennifer Aniston, who seems transformed here....but nowhere near as much as Colin Ferrell, which if the credits hadn't told me, I would have never noticed it was him.
So anyway, the basic plot is this: three guys got three bosses that they decide to kill off. One boss is an unabashed egomaniac willing to tell you to your face that he'll eat you alive (Kevin Spacey, deliciously evil); another is a nymphomaniacal dentist (Jennifer Aniston) who sexually molests her assistant (Charlie Day) by blackmailing him against his fiancée; and the third is a raging coke addict (Colin Ferrell). From here, however, the movie plays it smart and focuses more on the leads (Day, Jason Bateman, and Jason Sudeikis) as they figure out how to pull off their intent. The smart move the movie takes is to show they can't even figure out how to figure out their intent. Things spiral out of control and it becomes a race for the characters just to catch up with themselves. These guys are so effectively clueless that it takes a deft series of mistakes and misunderstandings just to get them to the point where they can even ask themselves if they are capable of taking a human life. And of course by then things have happened beyond their ability to go back, really justifying the movie's brisk playlength. You'll be amazed how quickly time flies while watching this movie.
There certainly is a bit of a disappointment that the movie did not really go into questioning and reminiscing on its concept a little more. This movie under the hands of someone like the Coen brothers would have made an amazingly dry classic. However, it is under the capable hands of Seth Gordon, whose King of Kong: a Fistful of Quarters shows an almost equally sadistic ego/underdog id relationship. Perhaps in a sense the characters ARE too big to be fully believable and there's something more serious to go with here, but what this movie does have works well for it, and its closing sequence is a perfect closing note to the rest of the movie.
Now my qualms. Of all the boss/employee relationships shown here, the one between Jennifer Aniston and Charlie Day has a lot of room for criticism. This is a situation where if the genders were reversed, people would NOT find this movie funny... and my feelings about that are a little mixed. Is it wrong that we find this funny, or is it wrong that we wouldn't if the genders were reversed? However, there are two other reasons to criticize its inclusion. One is that whereas all the story elements ultimately work themselves out satisfactorily, nevertheless nympho-chick sort of gets forgotten as the two other bosses take over the movie for a bit. The unbalanced structure works because the movie ties up all its loose ends, but there is the fact that this part of the story is predicated on Day not wanting to lose his girlfriend. So, riddle me this, why couldn't he have said to his fiancée before psycho-lady drops the payload that she was trying to blackmail him? The question is tossed off with, "Oh well nobody will believe you because you're a sex criminal", but if we're to believe that this marriage he hopes so much for is supposed to have any basis for survival, we have to also believe duder has a spine and the trust of his lady. The spine is character development--the trust... absent. Nothing can convince me that Day's character could not have found at least some way of telling his fiancée what he told his friends, how he told them, and earn her trust--especially since he is clear whenever he tells everyone else about it that this is real victimhood.
So in that storyline is a wide variety of issues that may end up pulling this movie down from a deserved cult status. To be fair, it does point out things that need to be acknowledged, like the dismissiveness of most people towards the concept of female-to-male molestation and our tendency to automatically villify sex criminals without ensuring we know the actual crime. It's a storyline that I feel only falls apart because there's not enough of the relationship shown to believe in it, but it's open to being torn down depending on the reception of the audience.
Nevertheless I found the movie hilarious and witty, well written despite three writers and with surprising and welcome twists, with a satisfying payoff.
--PolarisDiB