Murderous employees, LSD-fuelled hippies and boozy suburbanites in the latest DVD reviews
After wowing fans and critics alike with his quirky documentary The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, Seth Gordon took a wrong-turn with his lightweight feature debut Four Christmases. The darkly comic Horrible Bosses (Warner Home Video) -the script for which languished in pre-production hell for around six years -marks Gordon’s welcome return to more offbeat material.
The movie focuses on three friends: Nick Hendricks (Jason Bateman, Arrested Development), Dale Arbus (Charlie Day, It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia) and Kurt Buckman (Jason Sudeikis, Saturday Night Live), all of whose lives are slowly being ruined by their demented bosses.
Hard-working Nick snaps when sociopathic Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey) taunts him with the possibility of a promotion, only to award it to himself, while meek dental assistant Dale is being sexually harassed by sultry dentist Julia Harris (Jennifer Aniston), who threatens to tell Dale’s fiancee that he had sex with her unless he actually does!
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In contrast, Kurt actually enjoys his job, although everything changes when his boss Jack (Donald Sutherland) dies, and the company is taken over by Jack’s narcissistic, coke-addicted son Bobby (Colin Farrell). When Kurt jokingly suggests that their lives would be better if their bosses were no longer around, the hapless trio embark on a slap-dash plan to hire a hitman, eventually settling for Jamie Foxx’s tough-talking ‘murder consultant’, who urges them to do away with one another’s bosses and conceal their motives.
Although the gag-rate is slightly scattershot, and the underlying narrative involving Spacey’s cartoonish villain lacks subtlety, Horrible Bosses contains an admirable amount of laugh-out-loud moments, and is unafraid of exploring dark material in pursuit of humour. While the reliably entertaining chemistry between Bateman, Day and Sudeikis should ensure that Horrible Bosses gets a deserved sequel, Jennifer Aniston and Colin Farrell are the real revelations here -both playing aggressively against type, to hugely impressive effect. Farrell’s grotesque pot-bellied, comb-over-sporting ego-maniac arguably deserved a movie to himself, while Aniston must surely be reflecting on why she didn’t cut her ties to the tired Rachel-in-Friends-esque roles that she always seems to play years ago. Good fun.
Subtitled ‘Ken Kesey’s Search For A Kool Place’, Magic Trip (Studio Canal) is a fascinating feature-length documentary about visionary writer Kesey -the celebrated author of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest -who embarked on a notorious LSD-fuelled cross-country trip in 1964. Accompanied by the self-styled ‘Merry Band of Pranksters’, who crammed themselves on-board a psychedelic school bus known as the ‘Magic Bus’, Kesey set out on a mythic trip across the States in search of answers, with the New York World’s Fair and its ‘World of Tomorrow’ believed to hold the key. Leading the way is Neal Cassady, the hell-raising inspiration for Dean Moriaty in Jack Kerouac’s seminal On The Road, who occupied the driver’s seat for the increasingly surreal trip, only adding to his enduring beatnik mystique.
At the time Kesey and his cohorts intended to make a documentary about their trip, but the film was never actually finished, and the neglected footage has remained virtually unseen ever since. Until now that is. Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney (Taxi To The Dark Side) and co-director Alison Ellwood are no strangers to the counter-culture -their last documentary was Gonzo: The Life and Work of Hunter S Thompson –and their passion for the subject is evident in their painstaking stitching together of scraps of rare footage and audio tape donated by the Kesey family.
With its hazy ’60s rhythms and abundance of compelling personalities, Magic Trip is a more enjoyable, offbeat documentary than Gibney’s examination of the larger-than-life Thompson. Although, at face value, the film offers a welcome glimpse at a mind-boggling episode in Beatnik folklore, the dark undercurrent is arguably more compelling, not least the slightly incongruous presence of the excitable Cassady -a babbling speed-freak who is destined to burn out without ever truly carving his own artistic identity. Intriguing stuff.
Come On Eileen (High Fliers) is the feature length debut from acclaimed short film director Finola Geraghty, who has achieved plaudits for a number of disparate shorts over the last decade or so. The film focuses on Eileen (Jackie Howe), a downtrodden mother of two free-spirited children -burlesque dancer Gypsey (Mercedes Grower) and Jimmy (Felix Malcolm-Still), who are itching to break free of their suburban ties. When a chance encounter with shifty cricket pro-turned-pot-head Bill (Stephen Taylor) leads to a tempestuous affair, Eileen’s boozy, long-buried demons re-surface in calamitous fashion, and her life implodes as she rapidly alienates friends and family alike.
In truth, the shrill, one-note performance from Jackie Howe (whose previous credits are limited to random episodes of The Bill and Holby City) does the film few favours. Further, the lazy, unconvincing script lacks not just meaty dialogue, but also dramatic tension and the necessary vein of dark humour that makes this kind of film work.
Possibly the film’s most glaring error is confining the likes of Julia Davis (Nighty Night), Noel Fielding (The Mighty Boosh) and Keith Allen (Shallow Grave) to meaningless supporting roles, when they would have been put to better use in the film’s central roles. Presumably budgetary restrictions were a factor, but few actresses do dark comedy better than Davis, and it would have been fascinating to see what she could have done in the title role. Equally, either Allen or Fielding could have thrown a genuine curve-ball as the pot-smoking ex-cricket pro. While it is never fun criticising a low-budget British feature film, when it is as misjudged at this it is sadly unavoidable. Very poor.
- Interview: Billy O’Brien and William Todd-Jones - March 2, 2017
- The Childhood of a Leader: the birth of a terrifying ego - February 10, 2017
- Hold your breath: Don’t Breathe, and more reviews - January 26, 2017
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