Melissa McCarthy seems to be following a dangerous trend. After a hilarious eruption into mainstream cinema in "Bridesmaids" in 2011, she’s made a handful of movies to showcase her cinematic and comedic talents. With 2013's "The Heat" she was a Martin Riggs-like cop from Boston, in 2014's "Tammy" she was an alcoholic petty thief, and in 2015's "Spy" she played a surprisingly competent novice secret agent. Each one was marketed as a comedy and each one got progressively worse and less funny -- which brings us to "The Boss."
This latest attempt to remind us why McCarthy is culturally relevant tries its damnedest to look like a social critique on ego and business but comes off more as a mean-spirited and out of touch cash grab. McCarthy plays Michelle Darnell, essentially Donald Trump with a uterus, who loses her millions and estate when she’s found to be insider trading. In an attempt to regain her reputation and her riches, she uses her business savvy to start a brownie business to rival that of a girl scout parallel. She’s aided by her former assistant Claire (Kirsten Bell), Claire’s precocious daughter Rachel (Ell Anderson), and Claire’s awkward-in-a-cute-way boyfriend Mike (Tyler Labine). Due to the rules of comedy and Wall Street, hijinks ensue involving backstabbing, misunderstandings, and an abrupt heist angle, Michelle becomes friends and enemies and friends again with the entire cast through a story tied together loosely through jokes that aren’t necessarily bad but are definitively not funny.
The acting is generally fine, but it’s clearly hard for these talented actors to get a hold of their characters when the writing is so basic and forced. The strangely neurotic editing doesn’t help, often going for a shot-counter-shot that often forgets to counter-shoot. However, Bell and McCarthy are both seasoned actresses and comedians and have easily the best chemistry in the film. Everyone else in the film feels like a forced, obligatory add-on, including a surreally unnecessary villain played by Peter Dinklage and weird Kristen Schaal and Cecily Strong cameos that lead to nothing and drop off the movie’s radar by the second act. Arguably the only one of these interludes that has much worth is two scenes with Kathy Bates as Michelle’s former mentor, both of which are criminally short and uproariously funny.
There’s really not much to say about this movie. It was a bad comedy created by a bunch of people with legitimate comedic talent with a half-dozen cameos thrown in for good measure. It’s a movie with a few moments that will make you chuckle but the vast majority of the film will make you shrug. You’ll leave the theater vaguely dissatisfied and with a sense of disappointment in both yourself and the actor for whom this comedy vehicle was for and… wait… wait a minute… is Melissa McCarthy becoming the next Adam Sandler? 1/5
