Horrible bosses review

You've all had that one boss, right? The one who convinced all your colleagues that you were an alcoholic, had coke-fuelled orgies in his office or sexually harassed you to the point of borderline rape? Nah, me either. The worst I've ever had to put up with is being made to process the quarterly spend spreadsheets a week early. Not so much 'horrible' as 'insensitive to my existing workload'.

But then, as much as I’m sure the premise-in-a-nutshell is supposed to be relatable, this is a story for which plausibility took a running jump off a belief-suspension bridge. Instead, we have a stupendous high-as-a-kite concept worthy of the Farrelly Brothers, as we watch three perfectly rational men come to the conclusion that the best way of dealing with each of their difficult bosses is to murder them in cold blood.

Okay, so perhaps it’s unfair to judge a comedy harshly for a flawed premise when the obvious intention is just to give opportunities for hi-jinks and silliness. The film is, after all, as funny as you might expect from the top-notch talent involved (even if all the best bits were in the trailers). Jason Bateman plays his typical pragmatic leader among such humorous idiocy, while Charlie Day tends to win the comedy contest between the three leads as his raspy anxiety makes for many hoots and chortles.

Neither of them live up to Colin Farrell's whacked-out, coke-paranoid Bobby Pellitt, though, who has most of the best lines (including, in reference to a wheelchair-bound employee, "It creeps me out – rolling around all day in his special little secret chair!" – again, in the trailer). At the same time,
Jennifer Aniston raises her potty-mouth game, discussing "cocks" and "pussy" with such abandon that it's all you can do to shake your head and think “Oh no no no…but you're Rachel..." Her first line, in which she asks Charlie Day if he has ever seen Gossip Girl only to say that she spent the previous night "fingering myself so hard to Penn Badgley, I broke a nail" left me flabbergasted. Which is, of course, the point, but still... Rachel.