Sharp Cast Lifts Horrible Bosses

Horrible Bosses is shockingly crude and a bit “uneven,” but it’s also amusing, critics say—because we can all identify with such workplace horrors. (Except maybe Jennifer Aniston as a crude, harassing dentist.)

• The film is “frequently very funny,” writes AO Scott in the New York Times. For one thing, it “does not bother to cut its coarseness with a hypocritical dose of sweetness or respectability,” he notes. “The laughter is mean but also oddly pure: it expels shame and leaves you feeling dizzy, a little embarrassed and also exhilarated.”

• “There’s an underlying, nearly universal relatability to Horrible Bosses that can’t be denied,” observes Michael O’Sullivan in the Washington Post.
• “Once they set up their promising premise, the three screenwriters don't quite know where to go,” writes Elizabeth Weitzman in the New York Daily News. Fortunately, the “outstanding cast steadies all but the most uneven moments.”
• But at NPR, Ian Buckwalter is less forgiving: “The talented cast and colorful vulgarities work overtime to cover for a lack of coherence, but they can only distract for so long.”

(More horrible bosses stories.)