Mark Reviews Movies: LIKE A BOSS

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 9, 2020

The most shocking thing about Like a Boss is that, at least according to the credits, it actually had a screenplay. It probably didn't take too much work for screenwriters Sam Pitman and Adam Cole-Kelly.

Here's the plot: Two longtime friends run a makeup company, get into business with the cutthroat owner of a larger one, and, after bickering through most of the story, discover how important their friendship is. There's some other stuff, too, mostly to do with a dubious understanding of how contracts work and a big product launch, which the two friends sabotage in order to get back at the makeup mogul who wronged them and to show off their own product.

In the real world, an inordinately wealthy and powerful CEO would probably just shut down the friends before they started talking. This, though, is the world of the half-assed comedy, in which people allow such shenanigans, because, without them, the story would be finished in about ten minutes.

As for the friends' breakthrough product, it's basically two makeup kits that can be connected together. The big announcement would probably be met with disbelief, both for how rudimentary it is and for how ungainly the concept of doing one's makeup while literally connected to another person would be. That's the real world, though. In the realm of the half-baked comedy, it's the most amazing thing anyone at the party has ever seen.

Does any of this nitpicking really matter? In a way, it doesn't, because this is less a story than it is a basic outline, with all of the predictable beats packaged together. The story isn't the point. The story is just an excuse. The point is to let those beats play out with plenty of room in between them. That extra space is there to be filled with whatever random jokes the screenwriters thought up, the actors improvised on the set, or, likely, some combination of both (The other shocking thing is that the movie doesn't end with any outtakes, which must surely exist, considering how much of this material was probably workshopped on set each day of shooting).

In another way, though, the plot details do matter, because they show just how little thought has been put into the characters, the assorted situations, and the actual gags on display here. This is the sort of movie in which the filmmakers count upon the comedic talents of the cast to carry the material—or just to make up things on the spot whenever, likely, the script has a sizeable gap or a note that a character does some shtick at any given moment.

The disheartening thing is that, in theory, this approach should have elicited some successful humor, if only because of the talents of the cast and the laws of statistical probability. The two friends, Mel and Mia, are respectively played by Rose Byrne, as the timid worrywart, and Tiffany Haddish, as the carefree one. Salma Hayek plays Claire Luna, the makeup magnate who schemes to steal the company from the women, by playing with their minds in order to end the friendship.

This cast should be funny. We've seen them play and excel in roles such as this in the past, and it's an unfortunate condemnation of the screenwriters and director Miguel Arteta that we're instead left to find humor from a couple of supporting characters.

Byrne does her best looking uncomfortable and anxious as Hayek's character dances a conga in her office and as Haddish's character speaks her mind without any filter. Haddish puts on a good show threatening to jump from a tall height, only to find herself in the precarious situation of almost falling (Claire admires this show of determination, instead of calling the cops, as any person in the real world would do). Hayek is bold and brash as the CEO, who carries around a golf club to have something with which to fiddle and to use as a random bludgeon.

The leads have nothing with which to work, though, because the jokes seem to come out of nowhere. Each scene plays as its own isolated gag, unconnected to the story and only loosely founded on the broad sketches of these characters.

The legitimately funny moments come from a pair of scene-stealers: Jennifer Coolidge, as an employee at Mel and Mia's shop who states non sequiturs as if they're pearls of wisdom, and Billy Porter, who pantomimes the idea of a "tragic moment" with astutely melodramatic physicality. In the real world of comedy, these aren't revolutionary moments by any definition, but in Like a Boss, they're the only real comedy that exists.

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