***MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS***

When the trailer was first released for Horrible Bosses it seemed to promise so much but upon watching it seems that those promises could not be kept. Whilst not terrible, it wasn’t quite as good as it could have been.

Horrible Bosses revolves around three friends (played by Jason Bateman, Chris Day and Jason Sudeikis) who decide that their bosses are getting in the way of their happiness. They then decide that the only possible solution to their problem is to kill their bosses.

The three main actors, particularly Chris Day, each play their parts well providing some great character interaction and the friendship between the three is entirely believable. Colin Farrell, as Kurt’s (Sudeikis) cocaine addicted boss, is not in the film as much as I would have liked but when he is featured he plays his part and provides some laughs. Kevin Spacey particularly impressed in this and is completely believable as the villain of the piece; he doesn’t provide many laughs but he adds some much needed drama. Even Jennifer Aniston, who is completely over rated by every female on the planet, is tolerable in this and puts in her best performance post-Friends as a sex crazed dentist. Oh, and Jamie Foxx is completely rubbish in this.

The pacing, story, action and character interaction in the first two acts is really good. The first act is a great introduction to the three main characters, the dynamic of their friendship and the wholly unreasonable situations that their bosses put them in. It sets up the film with the story and a few laughs but by the end of the third act you feel like the film never really fulfilled it’s potential.

Some of the scenes seemed slightly too long and were filled out with a lot of dialogue that wasn’t really that humorous unfortunately. Although, this could be down the directing of the piece; there were a lot of long takes which made a few scenes seem to drag and I think that this comes down to inexperience. Horrible Bosses is Seth Gordon’s third feature length film as director; his most recent was Four Christmases and his debut was a film called Squirt which holds a 1.7 rating on IMDB so read what you like into that.

The end is really what lets the film down. Where the first and second acts do all they can to build the audience up for what should be a really good climax, the third act seems to go out of it’s way to ruin any hopes and expectations that the audience may have. It just seems a little too convenient, even for a comedy film where similar things can be forgiven. The ending I refer to is being given the all clear by the police thanks to Kurt’s car’s navigation system operator. The actual tying up of the film afterwards with each of the three main characters returning to work actually felt pretty nice.

I would watch this film again and who knows, maybe it will be better upon second viewing.

My Rating: 6.5/10