Horrible Bosses

"That 'Strangers on a Train' Shit"
or
"It's Like a Douchebag Museum...!"

Office politics can get mean.  Office politics can make you crazy.  Office politics can get very, very messy (now, we have a movie that has all three!)However, I don't know many offices (outside the Post Office) where the politics can make you homicidal.  Not even Congress.But that's the situation in Horrible Bosses, which given the tough economic times, the high unemployment rates, and the relative lack of power suffered by your disappearing middle class, almost seems plausible.  Documentarian/director Seth Gordon (The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters) has made a film that follows three rather hapless worker-buddies (who seem competent at their jobs, the events of the movie notwithstanding), as their job situations drive them to considering murdering their higher-ups.  All three are unmarried (although Charlie Day's dental technician is engaged), so we're talking some arrested development here, especially considering Jason Bateman is one of the three and SNL's Jason Sudeikis is the third).  Bateman's Nick is up for a promotion, so he's been tolerating some abusive grooming tactics by his boss Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey, recycling his role in Swimming with Sharks), but doesn't get it when Harken takes the position himself; Sudeikis' Kurt is also expecting advancement as an account manager at the chemical factory run by Donald Sutherland, when Sutherland's character dies, and the company is taken over by his "Dipshit Cokehead Son", played by Colin Farrell (in a nicely over-the-top skeezeball performance, which seems to have been cut a bit—he's not in it much; And Day's Dale is a tech for an extremely aggressive cougar of a dentist (Jennifer Aniston, bless her) who is determined to seduce him (for some reason), and is incapable of anything more complicated than single entendres.

They decide that, rather than "Best Practices," going to "H.R.," or finding another situation, they'll merely cut through the red tape and go straight to the yellow—they're going to kill their bosses.  So much for negotiating skills and being a "people person."  This is what commiserating in a bar can lead to.  The next bar leads them to Dean Jones (Jamie Foxx—playing it straight and dead-pan), an ex-con who goes by a common vulgarism, because "Dean Jones" reminds too many people of The Love Bug.  No wonder they want this guy to plan the executions.  Jones' suggestion is that each of the guys does the murder of someone else's boss (and dutifully, Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train is mentioned, as is Throw Momma From the Train, which is the red-headed step-child of the Hitchcock film...which reminds me that today is recycling day).

This cannot go well, and despite some laugh-out-loud moments, it does not, succumbing to "easy answers," and a "Deus ex machina."  God's gotta be watching these guys, because they're so incompetent, they can't do anything right*...which leads us back to the recycling bin.  Rummaging through, it is not too hard to see that this is The Hangover which itself is a new version of a Three Stooges movie, especially in the psychology of the three leads.  Bateman plays Moe the strong one, Day is Larry the weak whiner, and Sudeikis is so meat-headed he can only be Curly.  And while no eye-poking or face-slapping occurs, you just know that the insults and slow burns between the three are the passive-aggressive equivalent.  And a lot less fun.

There are good moments—Aniston and Farrell are clearly having fun playing broad—and one of my favorite actor-characters shows up at the end (a little too briefly), but all in all, the face I wanted to slap was my own.

Though not completely horrible, Horrible Bosses is a Cable Watcher.

* This shoots down the premise of the movie: if these guys are so ham-fisted doing...everything...maybe they don't deserve the promotions they think they've been cheated out of. 

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters

"The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" (Seth Gordon, 2007) Interesting little documentary about the sub-world of video-gamers and the clashing ego's of those trying to achieve high scores. It's also a bit like a real-life version of those Anthony Mann/James Stewart Westerns where a newcomer used to doing things his way comes up against an entrenched system with closely held beliefs that serve their own self-interests.

And, of course, those depend on a good villain, and they don't come better (or self-deluded) than Billy Mitchell, the mulleted hot-sauce "king" who has everyone in his limited sphere convinced that he's a genius...when what he is...is very good at video-games. Mitchell has had the reputation since high-school, so it's about there where his maturity ended and he stopped to grow as a human being. Instead of conversation, he spouts vaguely threatening marketing bursts full of brio but without much substance to back himself up. You spend the movie wanting him to take a large fall.

Riding into town comes Steve Wiebe, an over-achiever who's had to contend with disappointment most of his life. Laid off from Boeing, he goes back to school for a Master's and passes time playing Donkey Kong, analyzing the patterns and achieving higher and higher scores. Until one day, he passes Mitchell's. You can't have a mano e mano match without a referee, and the story provides that with Walter Day,* self-styled arbiter of video-game high scores through his company, Twin Galaxies.

Wiebe submits a video-tape of his high-scoring game, but the tape is rejected as insufficient proof, amid speculation by Mitchell cronies that Wiebe's machine has been tampered with by an enemy of Mitchell's—these guys are the wimpiest of paranoiacs. So, to prove his point, Wiebe schleps all the way to the booming metropolis of Laconia, New Hampshire to an arcade where a "live" play of the game can be witnessed and verified. Wiebe does it, but then Mitchell submits a tape (which appears to have glitches in it) of a higher-scoring game, which apparently he just had lying around in case of emergencies. That tape is accepted with no questions asked, and Wiebe becomes aware that he's not just fighting a pixelated Donkey Kong but a system rigged for the benefit of its own 800 lb gorilla.

It's fascinating to see so many "grown" men getting worked up over bragging rights of a video game, and how low they can sink in trying to get "their" way. The Mitchell drones are particularly pathetic, doing service to their dark lord so he doesn't have to make an appearance as witness, or risk anything. That one of them admits in interview (in front of Mitchell, who petulantly seethes silently) that Wiebe's a good guy and a good player is the only satisfaction one gets from the film...other than getting a chance to see this topsy-turvy little fiefdom of gaming.

After the film was released, there were protestations. Both Wiebe and Mitchell have said that they've actually competed before the doc was being filmed, and actually they get along great ("Hey, they're buds'!"), and the film was edited to make the story simpler (something the film-makers admit, and is, no doubt, absolutely true), but one comes away thinking one's seeing a lot of truth in the frame, despite not seeing all of what was recorded. You can manipulate a story with editing, certainly, but you can't make a person say anything they don't want to say on-camera.

Editing lies, but every picture tells a story.

Even though his actions belie it, even Mitchell admits to that in the film.

(And in the interest of public disclosure, I just played "Donkey Kong On-line," and scored 200, before thinking I was wasting my day—five minutes of it—and giving up.

* Day seems like a decent sort, trying to keep track of all the wimp/macho sniping, throwing himself in between the fights going on between ego-driven gamers. Guinness Book of Records recognizes him as an authority. Now, that is an accomplishment.