Digital Divide: November 2011
As anyone who has ever held a job for more than a week can tell you, the workplace sucks.
Oh, people may tell you that they love their work and love what they do and couldn’t see themselves doing anything else and blah blah blah . . . Yet these are the same people who plunk down $20 a week on lottery tickets. After all, if you’re not working for yourself, you’re only making money for someone else.
The only thing worse than working for someone else is working for someone who makes your life a living hell. Such is the premise of Horrible Bosses (Warner Bros.).
Three best friends and working stiffs (Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis) are each cursed with loathsome supervisors and hostile work environments. Bateman is cursed with Mr. Harkin, played by the great Kevin Spacey. Here, Spacey basically trots out the same loutish character he played in Swimming With Sharks, but if the boss fits . . .
Sudeikis has to endure Bobby Pellitt, brilliantly played by a heavily made-up Colin Farrell. Pellitt assumes control of the family business, and has no interest in it other than as a means to fund his cocaine-and-hookers lifestyle.
Finally, Day works as a dental assistant to Dr. Julia Harris, which finds another nice bit of casting-against-type with a nice turn by Jennifer Aniston. Her problem is constant sexual harrassment, something the other two don’t really see as being a big problem at all.
When Bateman is passed over for promotion, the three decide it’s time to take action and get rid of the offending supervisors. Of course, since none of them actually know a thing one about how to go about it, much bumbling ensues.
Horrible Bosses drags a bit in the middle, and the result is a film that could have been trimmed by about 20 minutes without losing anything. But the performances by everyone involved make it worth the effort.
There is a single-disc version, and a three-disc set available, which includes an extended version of the film along with the original theatrical release. Also included are deleted scenes, interviews with the cast about their own bad work experiences, and a segment with the Spacey, Aniston, and Farrell.
If you want a look at things from the other side, there’s Bad Teacher (Columbia). This one finds Cameron Diaz as Elizabeth, a junior-high teacher who cares not a wit about teaching. Seems she’s only doing it because she’s been dumped by her sugardaddy fiancé, and needs to keep working in order to save enough money for a boob job, in order to snag “a man who will take care of me.”
Yes, it is as bad as it sounds.
Into the school comes Scott, an impossibly cheery, as well as quite wealthy, teacher played by Justin Timberlake. Of course, Elizabeth zeroes in on him from the start, but finds him not as easy to seduce as expected.
Bad Teacher will remind most of Bad Santa, as they both share the same sort of sociopathic characters. Yet Teacher falls woefully short of Santa, as it has none of the the latter’s subversive genius.
Although Diaz gamely commits to the premise, the film wastes the talents of Jason Segel as the school’s gym teacher who yearns for Elizabeth, and John Michael Higgins as the principal.
The Blu-ray release featuress the usual behind-the-scenes stuff, gag reels, outtakes, and deleted scenes, but there’s really nothing that can save the whole thing. Or anything.
Also Available: Captain America: The First Avenger puts the finishing touch on Marvel’s preparation for next summer’s superhero blowout The Avengers. Here, Captain America gets the origin treatment as we go back to WWII to find the shielded one kicking some Nazi tail and taking some Nazi names. Still, The First Avenger fares better than the other big superhero flicks of the past year (the average Thor, and the well below-average Green Lantern), thanks to good performances by Stanley Tucci and Tommy Lee Jones, as well as Chris Evans as Cap himself.
— Timothy Hiatt
Category: Columns, Digital Divide, Monthly
