For a movie that gave major crossover success to TV stars Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis and revitalized the career of Jason Bateman following the major success of "Arrested Development," "Horrible Bosses" does not get the respect that deserves.
The film was released in 2011 to an opening weekend of about $50 million, which, for a Rated-R Comedy, is very rare to see. Besides the trio of Bateman, Day, and Sudeikis, the film does boast quite the supporting cast. The film has Jennifer Aniston in a very raunchy and atypical role, Colin Farrell as a cocaine-addled and spoiled son of Sudeikis' former boss, and Kevin Spacey as an emotionally controlling and manipulating boss who goes out of his way to make Bateman's character miserable. The film also features an uproarious performance by Jamie Fox, in a performance that features a very colorful palette of language from Foxx.
The film is mainly carrying by the insane amount of good chemistry between the lead seven actors, especially that of Day's Dale and Aniston's Dr. Julia Harris. The reason why she is such a horrible boss is because she sexually harasses Dale to the point where she threatens his engagement to the love of his life.
The reason why this film should be revisited, besides the fact that people need to be reminded how good this film can be because of its inept sequel, is because it shows all of the factors that need to go into making a good film need to work well together in order for it to get the point across that the filmmakers want to get across.
Everything just works in this; from the script to the direction to the performances of its lead actors, "Horrible Bosses" just clicks all together very well.
So often today we see films trying to cram too many jokes with no story into a movie or focus on the fact that the cast includes amazing actors and that's about it. However, while "Horrible Bosses" did make the majority of its money based off of the fact that it had an amazing cast, it backs up the cast by having a very solid story and the cooperation of its lead actors.
All in all, "Horrible Bosses" deserves to be revisited for a multitude of reasons, but there are some that stand out above all others. It starts with the cast—I know, it sounds like I'm beating a dead horse, but when the horse is this good, it deserves to be spoken about at length. The cast led by Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudeikis carries this film at points when it doesn't have a lot of source material to work on and, based pretty much on that alone, this film should be revisited.
