Movie Review: The Boss

The story behind this movie is a good one; have a very rich Martha Stewart-like billionaire woman getting caught insider trading. Then have her go to prison and lose her business and all her assets. This premise mostly makes no sense because just going to prison for 5 months would not result in the loss off a large fortune or a company, but for the purposes of this story this rich woman going broke very quickly creates the second act when she goes broke. Underlying this story is the main characters bad childhood which included several foster homes and eventually an orphanage. Her lack of a real childhood is the reason why she drives herself to being extremely rich by starting her own business.

After getting out of prison the main character played by Melissa McCarthy has to rely on the help of her former assistant played by Kristen Bell to keep her off the streets. What follows for this formerly very rich woman who is now practically homeless, is a period of wallowing around and some humorous dialogue and physical comedy followed by plan to use a girl-scout-like troupe of teenage girls to start a company that sells brownies similar in concept to Girl Scout cookies. The physical comedy in this movie is nothing new but the humorous dialogue at times is hard to follow due to its rapid-fire nature and obscure references, one involving the actor Benedict Cumberbatch which made no sense and was not funny. There is a good deal of foul language in this movie so its definitely not for kids, especially at the end when the overuse of a common phrase for oral sex is used way too many times, probably because they thought it would be funny to repeat it over and over again unnecessarily. Some parts are funny and the proof was some laughs in the audience, but not enough to make a below average story work for the whole two hours. "The Boss" is another example of the clout to get a movie made rather than the quality of a great script written by someone who is a talented and funny screenwriter.

This movie should be seen by big fans of Melissa McCarthy, but probably missed by most everyone else.





The Boss - IMDB