When a film has a title this simple, it comes with the expectation that you’re going to get exactly what it purports to deliver. While many will walk away satisfied, its easy to see that just as many will be disappointed.
The factors that deliver are apparent up front: Jason Bateman has done a fine job staying at top billing in comedic films since the end of Arrested Development, while Charlie Day has become the most beloved character on It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, and Jason Sudeikis… well, was on Saturday Night Live. That rounds out the employees, while their eponymous employers are rounded out by Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, and Colin Farrell. Sound too good to be true?
It’s hard to level out how often the performers work and don’t work in the film, and with six leads, it’s easy to balance the jokes. One performer who doesn’t work without exception is Sudeikis, who, rather than find a way to enhance the comedy of a scene by playing along with its place in the plot, seems preoccupied with the notion that being a lady’s man is funny. It isn’t. Watching him flirt with girls and sleep around is more annoying than anything else and the film suffers for it. By contrast, Charlie Day manages to steal just about every scene, even when he’s toning himself down.
The plot is about as obvious as the title: three working stiffs hate their bosses. The plan is where it gets hairy: they decide to kill them. A comedy in the work environment is a good idea, since everyone watching it can relate, and though most employees loathe their employers, devising a plan to actually kill them is not funny so much as it is sick and requiring of a mental health professional. When the first body hits the floor, albeit in an unexpected circumstance, the tone becomes dramatically darker and the film rarely recovers.
Worse yet, this idea was put into film form before and also starred Kevin Spacey; Swimming With Sharks beat this to the theatres by a mere 17 years and failed to connect with audiences because a fed-up employee can’t think of anything more creative to do than mercilessly torture his boss with physical punishment. Did it ever occur to anybody that coming up with an enacting a plan to get one’s boss fired and creating a path for their own success would be a far more damning revenge scheme?
Fortunately, the film has enough big laughs to keep the proceedings moving along, even if the audience occasionally pauses to catch up to the tone changes. It won’t be a high point for anybody involved, but it’s a serviceable film to catch as a rental.
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