Movie Review: The Boss

Melissa McCarthy will do anything for a laugh, except, frustratingly, edit for quality.

In The Boss – directed by McCarthy’s husband, Ben Falcone - she tumbles down stairs, pries her mouth open with a teeth-whitening vice and raps DJ Khaled’s now-ancient anthem “All I Do Is Win”.

She also administers a full-body spray-tan in the shower, stuffs a handful of cookies up a rival’s backside and nunchucks herself in the face.

Few of these actions muster any kind of emotional or synaptic response – concern; fear; despair – let alone a laugh.

Though, if I’m being honest with myself, I suppose the mouth-widener was pretty funny.

Some gags are just amusing on a primal level, in spite of our better judgement, and it’s this primal response McCarthy is betting on in The Boss. It may not be smart, or even good, but it’ll accept victory in the form of two or three guilty chuckles. Hence: the near-constant mistreatment of its characters and their genitals.

McCarthy plays entrepreneur Michelle Darnell here, the “47th richest woman in America” and, eventually, jailbird, on account of some felonious insider trading. After five months behind bars, she returns to the world a free woman; also, a broke one.

Having burned her bridges all over the country – including those leading to her mentor Ida Marquette (Kathy Bates) and her ex-lover Renault (Peter Dinklage) - she’s left begging for a spot on the couch of her ex-assistant, Claire (Kristen Bell).

It takes only a few weeks bunking with Claire and her daughter Rachel (Ella Anderson) to plot a new business venture: selling Claire’s apparently incredible brownies, with the help of a radicalised group of former girl scouts. Soon, “Darnell’s Darlings” are let loose onto the streets. Viewers, sadly, have to wait another 45 minutes before they’re offered the same opportunity by the theatre.

The Boss is inspired by one of McCarthy’s old improv characters and co-written by McCarthy, Ben Falcone and Steve Mallory; meaning, she has few others to blame for the curation of her comedy legacy.

She remains an irrepressible and dynamic comic force, and, often, heartfelt and human. You just wish she and Falcone would put the additional work in to ensure that their flicks (Tammy and now this) match the heights of her collaborations with director Paul Feig (The Heat, Spy and Bridesmaids, for which she was Oscar-nominated).

Instead, The Boss relies on easy, expected jokes and lazy or ill-suited stylistic choices. (Lazy: using the tired musical cue of “Money (It’s What I Want)” in 2016. Ill-suited: a climactic sword-fight that’s shot with leaden obligation.) Its feminist streak notwithstanding – the mostly-female cast gets to be crass in a manner we don’t usually see – The Boss is a lot of the same old, delivered poorly.

The only laughs come from McCarthy’s enthusiasm. Her supporting cast attempt to equal her boundless energy (like the poor, valiant Dinklage) or get out of the way entirely (Bell, who’s really funny enough to anchor her own comedies, rather than simply play ‘normie’ to McCarthy). As a result, the acclaim and blame belongs solely to the woman who brought Michelle Darnell into being 15 years ago at The Groundlings and created the underwhelming environment for her film debut.

See? It’s tough to be the boss.

2.5/5

In cinemas now. Rated MA15+ for coarse language and sexual references.