Well, it’s better than TAMMY. The last time comic dynamo Melissa McCarthy paired creatively with her husband, Ben Falcone, the results were the disastrous, richly unfunny work that is neck and neck with IDENTITY THIEF as her worst on-screen appearance. Again with Falcone as director and co-writer with McCarthy and Steve Mallory, THE BOSS is something a little easy to swallow. That’s appropriate because its core idea is about a start-up company selling delicious brownies. The flaws in the film are still so obvious that it hurts to endure them at times, but at least there are laughs and characters we don’t hate spending time with this time around.
The film opens up on one of its funniest sequences with a young Michelle Darnell being taken from the orphanage where she grew up by prospective parents, only to be brought back… three times at three different ages. Sound funny, right? It actually is, especially since the nun who meets Michelle is played by Margo Martindale, who just has a knack for cutting through the bullshit (“You can’t just return her.”) Michelle grows up to be a successful businesswoman (McCarthy), self-help guru, and someone devoted to her single life with no family. She was taught by her mentor (Kathy Bates in a Paula Deen wig) that families are for suckers, and being the best in business is everything. As a result, Michelle has no friends beyond the lackeys that work for her, including her assistant Claire (Kristen Bell), a single mother and resident doormat.
Michelle’s one-note character trait about rejecting the idea of family is the film’s most glaring issue. First, it makes it impossible for the character to get any deeper. Second, it makes the film’s turns utterly predictable. Look, I’m not going to a Melissa McCarthy film to be wowed by plot twists, but give us something unexpected.
Michelle is turned into the SEC by her arch rival (and former lover, naturally) Renault (Peter Dinklage). She gets convicted of insider trading and sentenced to four month in jail, after which her possessions have been completely liquidated and she’s left with no job or home. She ends up on the doorstep of Claire and daughter Rachel (Ella Anderson), who takes pity on her former boss and lets her have the fold-out couch. Claire now works in a nondescript job for a more conventionally terrible boss (Cecily Strong), but she also has an office mate, Mike (Tyler Labine), who takes an interest in her.
The beginning of Michelle’s return to power begins with Claire’s scrumptious homemade brownies. Michelle builds an entire Girl Scouts-like organization around to sell them, but with the girls keeping a piece of the profit for a college fund. The idea is a hit, and once money starts flowing in, trouble comes sniffing around in the form of Renault. He wants to buy the company because he’s still weirdly obsessed with Michelle and wants to get his hands on anything she touches.
THE BOSS has just enough gags that land to make the rest of the film that much more frustrating. Parts of the film are clearly shot in Chicago (although much of it is Atlanta doubled as the Windy City). One of the best visual gags is a pan up the Trump International Hotel & Tower, which ends when the camera lands on the big ugly sign on the side of the building that reads Renault, instead of Trump (Chicagoans especially will appreciate that).
But after McCarthy’s solid work in films like THE HEAT, ST. VINCENT, and especially SPY, it’s disappointing to see THE BOSS turn into a lame caper film, complete with a rumble sequence between her brownie-selling girls and her cookie-selling rivals. As funny as a fight scene between her and Dinklage might sounds, surprisingly, it lands flat. I’ll give the film credit for sticking to its R-rated guns, but even that only really results in a few extra F-bombs and nothing particularly inspired. The best moments in the film belong to Michelle and Claire, as they almost unexpectedly (to them, not us) become friends.
As much as I love a good McCarthy face-plant, there’s something about the dialed-back version of her that I’ve grown to really enjoy. Bell can certainly be funny and charming when she wants to be. Playing straight-woman to McCarthy probably pays well, but is still beneath her abilities. THE BOSS is middling McCarthy, which can still be pretty funny, but there will always be that lingering sense that she could be doing better. GHOSTBUSTERS, here we come! (That’s me being optimistic…)
