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Horrible Bosses

HORRIBLE BOSSES directed by Seth Gordon, written by Michael Markowitz, John Frances Daley and Jonathan Goldstein, with Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell, Kevin Spacey and Jamie Foxx. A Warner Bros release. 97 minutes. Opens Friday (July 8). See listing Rating: NNNN


Horrible Bosses is a big, broad, appealingly ridiculous workplace comedy in the Employees Strike Back mode of 9 To 5 and Office Space. It starts off at a slight remove from reality and gets sillier and sillier as it goes along our only responsibility is to hang on and enjoy the ride.

Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day are Nick, Kurt and Dale, put-upon wage slaves fed up with the constant abuse and harassment of their repugnant employers (Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell and Jennifer Aniston). Finally pushed past their breaking points, they decide to off them all, swapping the murders to avoid suspicion. It’s a pretty clever plan until one of their targets does something unexpected, sending everything into a panicked spiral.

And once everything goes sideways, Horrible Bosses spins its characters into a series of increasingly insane situations where acting logically just makes everything much, much worse. It’s a devilishly smart farce disguised as a really, really dumb one.

Bateman once again mines laughs from his fussy overthinker persona, and Sudeikis and Day refine their Going The Distance buddy act into a perpetual joke machine. And the horrible bosses have a fine old time: Aniston invests her one-note sexual predator with a degree of self-awareness Spacey revives the spirit of his Swimming With Sharks monster, Buddy Ackerman and Farrell has an almost shameful amount of fun with the role of a cokehead sex fiend, wearing a prosthetic comb-over that makes him look like a pissed-off light bulb. I kind of want to see his spinoff prequel.

normw@nowtoronto.com

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