Another work-themed disappointing outing from Jason Bateman

Rating: 4/10 (3 January 2012)

While not as inexcusably awful as Jason Bateman's foray into the manufacturing sector in "Extract", he hasn't exactly exonerated himself with the workplace comedy "Horrible Bosses." To be fair, it's not Bateman but the bosses that don't quite work here. While the usually excellent Kevin Spacey's exploitative boss does ring true, Bateman's character wants his dead largely because he wants his job. This motivation would work better in a noir rather than a comedy. Nice-girl Jennifer Aniston takes a crack at playing dark as a newer comedy-stereotype-the perverted dentist. The problem here is that the writers need to twist themselves into knots, even putting their protagonist on the sexual offenders registry, to explain why her male dental hygienist would reject her advances. Why not just make the character gay? It would have made so much more sense and provided an interesting dynamic. The third horrible boss played by Colin Farrell spends so little time on the screen, we are not clear why he needs to become a target of a murder plot. The movie does get points for being upfront about the lack of moral rectitude of the three main characters who are, after all, resorting to murder to make their working lives more pleasant. Similarly, it is upfront about the "soft" racism of the three white, male, early-middle aged characters in their interactions with Jamie Foxx as a con man and an Indian technical support rep who is central to the end of the film. The film may be among the last that will be able to try to wring most of its funny out of prolonged sequences of wild profanity. The shock value of shocking language has largely lost much of its voltage through overuse and increasing familiarity. In short, the far more subtle horror of the bosses in "Office Space" or Sigourney Weaver's fashionista in "Working Girl" far better earn a homicidal fate.