Movie review: Workers take bizarre, R-rated revenge in darkly comic ‘Horrible Bosses’
Summer in the multiplexes used to be the exclusive domain of kid- and family-friendly G, PG and PG-13 rated movies. That is, until “Wedding Crashers” scored such a surprise hit in the heat of 2005 and pioneered the way for a rash of R-rated counter-programming in summers since.
Already this summer, moviegoers with a taste for adult-oriented raunchiness or without youngsters to placate have found their guilty R-pleasures in “The Hangover Part II,” “Bridesmaids” and “Bad Teacher.” Now the ante is upped with the zestfully rude and offbeat “Horrible Bosses,” a nutty, naughty “Nine to Five” for working guys who fantasize about taking deadly revenge on abusive employers.
Deftly directed by Seth Gordon (best known for the hilarious cult video-game documentary “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters”), the movie brings together a top-shelf cast with a wildly zany but tightly written script to create a darkly queasy comedy that’ll likely make you cringe as often as it makes you laugh.
The far-fetched premise is this: three drinking buddies – Nick, Kurt and Dale (Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day) – like their jobs but hate their horrible bosses. Nick’s boss Dave Harkin (Kevin Spacey) is a cruel corporate shark with a murderous streak; Kurt’s boss Bobby Pellitt (Colin Farrell) is a pretentious tool determined to run the family business into the ground, and Dale’s boss, Dr. Julia Harris, D.D.S. (Jennifer Aniston) is a sexual predator keen on luring naïve Dale into the sack.
Through a series of unlikely comic turns the working-stiff pals become so harassed and desperate that they enlist the aid of a weirdly tattooed barroom hustler named Mother(bleep!) Jones (Jamie Foxx) and hatch a crazy, “Strangers on a Train” scheme to murder their three horrible bosses.
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 CHARLIE DAY as Dale Arbus, JASON SUDEIKIS as Kurt...){kind=link}