I'm a big Melissa McCarthy fan. I think when she's working with someone else's material like Judd Apatow or Paul Feig and she's able to improvise as much as she wants, she can give an audience comedy gold. She's had much success, especially under Feig in comedies that have capable writers (Bridesmaids, The Heat, Spy). But, it's been the couple of films that she's taken her own initiative to either write herself or with her husband that have been kind of duds. Tammy, a few years ago was one, and now the other is The Boss. I watched The Boss hoping for a few good laughs dispersed throughout a decent story, but that's not exactly what I got.
The Boss, written by McCarthy, husband, and friend is about a female titan of industry, Michelle Darnell, who is sent to prison for insider trading and all of her assets are auctioned off or sold. So, once she's released from prison, she has nothing and is forced to live with her former assistant, Claire (Kristen Bell). From there, she spends her time wallowing in self-pity and looking for a way to climb back to the top. She takes Claire's daughter to an off-brand Girl Scout meeting and decides that's her way. She takes Claire's delicious brownie recipe and begins her own troops who sell these brownies. She climbs back to the top and yada yada yada.
The good: Well, I can say that it's definitely not a terrible movie. I didn't ever want to walk out and demand my money back. There are a few separate instances, too, when McCarthy goes off on a hateful, profanity-laden rant toward someone that seriously provides a significant amount of chuckles. There's also Kristen Bell who is absolutely adorable (which is the case in almost everything she's in), though she's a bit under-used. The feud between Michelle and the mother of a scout is also another element that's ripe with comedy.
The bad: Pretty much everything else. I wasn't so much upset that I watched the film, I was more confused as to why it was even a film. McCarthy and co. wrote the movie meaning that it came from an idea that wasn't immediately scrapped. One of the three had the idea and loved it so much they spent countless amounts of time and money writing it, casting it, filming it, promoting it and everything else that goes into making a movie. But, the story is so blah that I just can't believe anyone went for it. There was no real message. There was no real purpose. It's just a bland idea that without the attachment of McCarthy would've been hucked into the wastebasket of some intern reading for a mid-level production company. Had I written the same script back in college and submitted it for peer review, it would've been torn up.
I think what happened that made it such a mess is that, other than the entire concept for the story that is more vanilla that fat-free yogurt, is that there were a lot of comedic misfires. Peter Dinklage is cast as Darnell's rival and ex-lover and it's supposed to be just funny that he's small and used to bang Michelle and that he's into karate. But, it's not funny. It's sloppy. Dinklage can be very funny, but people need to start writing him better comedic roles than he's been given (I'm looking at you hard Pixels). Then, there's also the rivalry of the regular off-brand girl scouts with Darnell's off-off-brand girl scouts that just screams lazy writing. And there's even a scene with Kathy Bates as Darnell's mentor that looks like it could've been a laugh riot, but was edited down for time and essentially just disregarded as a moment of comedy.
I still like McCarthy and I have big hopes for Ghostbusters, but The Boss was definitely a misfire that I think most movie-goers could kind of tell from the trailer. It doesn't set me back as a fan of her work, because she truly is one of the greats of our time, but they all can't be winners. A lot of comedians who write their own work do very well (Will Ferrell, Seth Rogen, Steve Carrell, etc.) and there's comedians who do better when someone else has written the work for them (Jim Carrey, Ben Stiller, and now, it seems Melissa McCarthy).
C-
No comments:
Post a Comment