TheRetroCritic

In most cases, comedies work depending on how good or clever their original premises are. And if that's true then Horrible Bosses should be amazing. Its not. And that it's not is something of a miracle. I mean, you've got Colin Farrell doing the mother of all Michael Keaton impressions with a combover, you've got a perfectly psychotic Kevin Spacey, a masturbating Jennifer Aniston...do you NEED more? Well good jokes would have been a plus. Sadly, Horrible Bosses is one of those movies where a bunch of funny dudes are left rambling in loud improv mode for hours as a golden set-up and potential hilarity go to waste. Sure there are some good lines here an there, amidst Charlie Day's relentless high-pitched screaming but a film like this, where the villains and the concept are the real stars, there really is no need to milk our main characters for on-the-spot lols. Try writing jokes next time, perhaps? I'm just sayin'... Admittedly, our bosses are stil

Whatever happened to the Farrelly Brothers? Now don't get me wrong, these guys were never the Fellini Brothers but for a while they were the go-to guys for gross-out, dumb but cute comedies. But after the genius of Dumb & Dumber , the creativity of There's Something About Mary and the extreme silliness of Me Myself and Irene things got too dumb ( Shallow Hal ) or too cute ( Perfect Catch ) leaving the brothers in a sort of comedy no man's land... Then Hall Pass comes along. Yes it's set in Providence, yes it's about two buddy idiots...but alas Dumb & Dumber this most certainly isn't. For one thing it's barely funny. Barring a couple of amusing build-ups or observations there's really nothing here to count on laughs-wise. Even the likes of Richard Jenkins, Christina Applegate, Jenna Fischer and Stephen Merchant fail to raise a single smile, it's really quite astonishing. That said, Owen Wilson is great and manages to create a surpri