Likeable Leads (and Funny Celebrity Cameos) Can't Make "Horrible Bosses" Great

Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day, Jason Bateman

Have you noticed how movie comedy titles are becoming increasingly straightforward? Hot Tub Time Machine. Going the Distance. She's Out of Your League. Bad Teacher. And now the new movie Horrible Bosses.

The operating theory is that it's no longer enough for a movie to have a "high concept" idea that can be clearly and simply communicated to would-be audiences who are supposedly overwhelmed with all the media vying for their attention; now the simple idea also has to be literally communicated by the movie's title.

I don't mind this when the movie itself is more than the title: if the filmmakers find some fresh or new way to tell the story — if they play with our expectations, taking us some place that we didn't quite predict or expect.

What I really hate is when the resulting movie is exactly what I expected. Why bother going if I can predict everything that's going to happen?

Sadly, that's pretty much the case with the new movie Horrible Bosses. The incredibly simple premise is: three nice guys have bosses so horrible that they decide to kill them all.

Unfortunately, this movie, a clear rip-off of The Hangover, is exactly what you expect in almost every way. The way they go about trying to kill their bosses is exactly what you'd expect, the things that go wrong are exactly what you'd expect. I love caper films and I love comedies of error, but one of the things I most like about them is that, after things careen completely out of control, the characters have to somehow set things right again — and that requires the movie's screenwriter to dazzle me with his or her ingenuity. But this movie's script is so lazy it basically has the problems magically solve themselves.

And talk about lazy? Strangers on a Train, which they refer to in the movie, works because the characters in that movie are strangers. The premise doesn't work when you're talking about three best friends!

Needless to say, the movie also can't be bothered with any sort of "heart," or characters you care about in any way, both of which almost all great comedies have. It's like the whole thing was outlined on a napkin.

Charlie Day, Jennifer Aniston

So is it at least funny? I mean, it is a comedy.

The three leading actors (Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day, who is utterly adorable, and Jason Bateman) are all likeable enough, and they share a certain kind of charm and chemistry together. And sure, the film has a few chuckles; if you're really in the mood to laugh, it'll do.

But once again, they're mostly all the jokes you'd expect (they hire an assassin from Craig's List, but the guy turns out not to be an assassin at all; the three suburban white guys go to a black bar to find an assassin; after being arrested, one of guys knows everything he knows about the law from ... Law and Order).

Nine to Five, a film with a similar theme, is not a great movie, but it has more wit and originality than this one.

Horrible Bosses' big gimmick is that the three leads are lesser known actors, but the three "bosses" are played by huge movie stars playing against type: Jennifer Aniston (as a dentist who is sexually harassing her male hygienist), Colin Farrell (as a lout who cares only about women and cocaine), and Kevin Spacey (as an arrogant, entitled a**hole).

Okay, so maybe Spacey and Farrell aren't really playing so much against type! (I'm kidding: Farrell is virtually unrecognizable in a comb-over wig and bad clothing. As for Spacey, well ... 'nuff said, right?)

Meanwhile, Jamie Foxx, whose cameo is by far the funniest, plays an assassin named "MotherF**ker" that they hire to do the job. But he has a big secret that he's keeping from them — though, naturally, you're certain to guess what his secret is long before it's revealed, because it's the most obvious one it could possibly be.

Jamie Foxx

The one interesting thing about the film? It has a number of gay jokes, and a couple of "faggots" dropped here and there (and also a fair number of "rape" jokes, a couple of which I thought were tasteless). But none of the gay humor is "gay panic" (where it's supposedly so hilarious when a straight guy is mistaken for gay), and the folks using words like "faggot" are invariably the a**hole bosses, not the hapless but sympathetic main characters.

For decades, GLBT activists (and writers like myself) have been complaining about "gay panic" humor and the casual use of gay expletives for laughs in American comedies. But Hollywood writers and producers have long insisted that it was simply impossible to tell gay-related humor, or even do a comedy at all, without resorting to these tropes.

It turns out they were wrong, and we were right. Who knew? (I write more about the film's gay humor here.)

Here is the Red Band (and NSFW) trailer for Horrible Bosses.