Like a Boss
Salma Hayek can be my boss any time, any day.
Cast of Characters:
Mia Carter – Tiffany Haddish
Mel Paige – Rose Byrne
Sydney – Jennifer Coolidge
Barrett – Billy Porter
Claire Luna – Salma Hayek
Director – Miguel Arteta
Screenplay – Sam Pitman & Adam Cole-Kelly
Producer – Marc Evans, Peter Principato, Joel Zadak & Itay Reiss
Rated R for language, crude sexual material, and drug use.
The Rundown: Lifelong besties Mia Carter (Tiffany Haddish) and Mel Paige (Rose Byrne) are living the life of their dreams running the cosmetics company they’ve built from the ground up. Unfortunately, it ain’t all sunshine and rainbows for them as they are in over their heads financially, so it’s no surprise that Mel jumps at the prospect of a buyout offer from cosmetics industry titan Claire Luna (Salma Hayek). Despite initial hesitation from Mia, the offer is too tempting to resist, and they both sign on the dotted line; however, they soon come to find that they may have signed a deal with the Devil.
Pre-Release Buzz: Tiffany Haddish has been a comedy go-to since her hilarious breakout turn in 2017’s Girls Trip, and Rose Byrne has shown great comic chops in recent years with films like Bridesmaids, Spy and Instant Family (even in the mediocre comedy Neighbors, Byrne proved to be the film’s highlight). Teaming the two up in their own raunchy, R-rated vehicle a la both Girls Trip and Bridesmaids seems like a no-brainer, and Salma Hayek and director Miguel Arteta, both of whom worked together in 2017’s darkly funny Beatriz at Dinner, being added into the mix are nice moves as well. That said, comedies and January-February have not mixed well (the Ride Along films, That Awkward Moment, The Wedding Ringer, Mortdecai, Fifty Shades of Black, Zoolander 2, etc.), but can the talent assembled here correct course?
The Good: Well… no, it can’t. Credit, however, should go to Jennifer Coolidge and Billy Porter for providing the film’s handful of laughs it manages to earn. Coolidge, a regular of Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries, does what she does best, playing the dingbat cougar she’s built her career on. Porter, playing Haddish and Byrne’s flamboyant employee, easily gets the film’s lone standout moment where he delivers a hilariously overdramatic rant that will most definitely be quoted by many following this release (the WITNESS! MY! TRAGIC! MOMENT!! line from the film’s trailer).
Hell, they were already quoting it at the screening I attended.
The Bad: Still, it should be downright shameful – almost criminal even – that your film has both Tiffany Haddish and Rose Bynre as your leads, yet I have to go down the list of talent to two supporting actors to credit this film for any laughs it did get out of me. Quite frankly, this film is awful; in fact, one could make the argument that it’s barely even a film, but more a series of desperate, unfunny comic gags sloppily slapped together in the hopes that maybe one of them will stick. It’s as if, midway through filming, Arteta and his co-writers Sam Pitman and Adam Cole-Kelly watched the Girls Trip scene where Haddish performs aggressive fellatio on a banana and went, “Ooh! We need to add a food scene for Haddish!”
“Ooh! Let’s have Haddish freak out and scream for her life as she dangles off a ledge!”
“Ooh! Let’s have a scene where a baby looks like it’s smoking a joint!”
“Hi, we need a cake decorated for our film. Can you make one that has a baby’s head bursting out of a vagina? And don’t forget to include a chocolate frosting ass hole.”
“Did we reach our quota of dick and pussy jokes yet?”
Look, I’m not opposed to raunchy R-rated humor. Far from it. Haddish’s Girls Trip was raunchy but also funny. Byrne’s Bridesmaids was raunchy but also funny. Salma Hayek’s Dogma was raunchy but also funny. The key phrase there is “but also funny”, and here, Like a Boss‘s humor just feels unnecessarily crass and cheap. One even wonders if this film even needed to be R-rated. The Devil Wears Prada, which this film bears some similarities to (being funny not being one of them), didn’t need the R-rating, and still contained a hundred times more bite and razor-sharp edge at PG-13 than this film.
But at least when the film takes a break from failing to make you laugh, we can get tender, poignant moments that really showcase the ride-or-die BFF love Mia and Mel have for each other, such as this heartfelt moment they share while blazing a joint.
“Remember when my mom died?”, Mia reminisces.
No, Mia. Mel forgot. Thanks for the reminder. What the hell kinda weed you smoking?
Yes, that is actually a scene that takes place in this film, one that leads to them getting a sudden urge to get some fries.
I guess remembering that time your mom died makes you hungry.
The Ugly: Poor Salma Hayek. The beautiful and charismatic Hayek can be both funny and a larger-than-life onscreen presence, and it’s clear both she and Arteta are trying to go for their own version of Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly from the aforementioned The Devil Wear Prada. With a far better script, they may have been able to reach that goal, but, boy, do they miss the mark here. Much of her character’s humor, if we can even call it humor, revolves around either a word Hayek has trouble pronouncing, a golf club she carries around with her solely for the purpose of smashing objects, or some cheap crack about her boobs.
Well, gee-whiz – isn’t that just hysterical.
You can’t really fault Hayek. It’s clear that she’s having a ball with this character, and is relishing the opportunity to chew the scenery, but someone of her talent deserves better than the trash material she gets to work with here.
Then, of course, there’s the ending, which shamelessly commits one of my biggest pet peeves in film – the sudden third-act lecture. Like a Boss spends most of the film throwing every crass, ugly, blue-humored, genital-covered joke in the book at us, before suddenly, at the snap of a finger, twisting 180 degrees into sentimental territory to remind us all that everyone is truly beautiful on the inside. This film is one dumb, extended and overplayed dick joke, and it still somehow has the balls big enough to give us a bull shit lecture on inner beauty, before then concluding in all the girls getting together to perform an eye-roll-inducing, karaoke bar rendition of Tina Turner’s cover of Proud Mary.
Consensus: Like a Boss certainly has considerable comic talent, all of whom are talented enough to eke out a handful of laughs on their own; however, that talent is ultimately wasted by the flat and superficial script’s failed attempts at the humor it’s straining so hard to achieve.
Silver Screen Fanatic’s Verdict: I give Like a Boss a D (★).
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