Saturday, July 9, 2011

JUST RELAX THERE, JODIE FOSTER:  There's a number of things that are very right about Horrible Bosses -- its plot structure leads to a satisfying third act which was not what I expected, and it's good to see Kevin Spacey where he belongs in a solid supporting role. At times, the movie is very funny, and that's mostly thanks to Charlie Day being a great Third Lead for this movie. He shines. (And there's a great cameo at the end which I know both Matt and I appreciated.)

That said, you cannot put Jason Bateman and Jason Sudeikis in the same film. They're both solid straight men—the sane man trying to keep it together in a chaotic world—but you can't have two straight men in the same comic plot. One of those roles needed to be more alpha male hero, because their characters and arcs were just too similar. Take your pick: Bradley Cooper, Vince Vaughn, Ryan Reynolds or Owen Wilson, among others. Someone's got to be the star of the movie, and Jason Bateman for all his virtues just isn't that. You can wait for cable on this one.

5 comments:

  1. Another problem with the film is that because of how the third act works, the Aniston/Day portion of the film becomes an afterthought--Aniston basically disappears from the third act of the film--indeed, her entire plot feels like it was written by separate writers than the rest of the movie. (Indeed, the coda scene for her storyline feels like it was reordered to be the end of the film rather than just before the end.)

    One thing I will give the film credit for is smartly casting two of the three bosses firmly against type (Aniston and Ferrell), as was the case with the cameo Adam mentions.

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  2. Carmichael Harold8:04 PM

    I liked, but didn't love, the movie, too, although I'm not sure I agree with the Bateman/Sudeikis diagnosis as to the problem.  I felt like Bateman was used pretty much as he was used in Arrested Development (straight man center who isn't exactly totally sane, just less crazy than everyone else), and that worked.  Sudeikis was used almost exactly as he was in Hall Pass (25 lecherous degress off of straight man center), which is a movie where Owen Wilson was the alpha male hero and which didn't work as well as this.   

    Maybe Matt gets at the bigger issue, which is that the couldn't figure out a way to keep the Aniston third of the movie as part of the plot, and so Day became less centric and the movie came unbalanced.

    The cameo was awesome and made me wish I'd see that person more.  Maybe that person needs to be in a Snickers Super Bowl commercial followed by my starting an online SNL-hosting petition.

    By the way, the link to the Vulture article on Bateman just re-ignited my sadness at the lack of Fametracker in our current online world.

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  3. isaac_spaceman10:04 PM

    Is Aniston disappearing from a film a problem?  Having not seen the film, I would conjecture that that is a problem solved. 

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  4. Watts9:23 AM

    Mobile blogger commenting and I don't get along, so I"ll repeat what I thought I already posted:

    Not to sound like I'm insulting the movie, but I gave it one more star because it was only 100 minutes long.  I'm so tired of overlong comedies (ahem, Bridesmaids).

    Colin Farrell was unrecognizable, to the point that I didn't realize who he was until the final credits showed me his name next to his face.

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  5. bella wilfer2:04 PM

    Agree with Watts - was THRILLED that it wasn't 900 hours.  Thought it was very funny overall and the amount of times I laughed made up for the fact that the third act gets derailed by the problem everyone's mentioning above.  A.O. Scott's review gets it right - it's totally offensive but also really really funny.  Good for Seth Gordon.

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