‘The Boss’ Review: Melissa McCarthy’s Fall from the Top and An Aggressive Comeback

Co-written by Melissa McCarthy and her husband-Ben Falcone who also directed this corporate themed fused with family comedy, The Boss, has unexpected hilarious scenes and lines on the back of Melissa’s amusing personality. But the storyline and the pack of many begging to be funny characters leaves the film undeservingly starved.

Melissa McCarthy is funny and when backed by an excellent script, she is capable of serving her audience with unending laughter—-a routine well delivered in her 2015 movie-Spy but lost out in ‘The Boss’, a lousily put together storyline alongside what seems like an improvising performance from the ruthless and foul-mouthed Melissa.

The family structure and connection of the film leaves a little to desire. If anything at all, it just reminds us of the rotten under-dealings even small family businesses have to push through—such as aggressive exploitation and fist fighting of children, led by an adult seems perfectly acceptable, when it becomes necessary to cut out rivals in an attempt to climb the slippery corporate ladder.

‘The Boss’ starts with a quick throwback of Michelle Darnell’s (played by Melissa McCarthy) childhood—-ensuring the audience gets a grasp of how Michelle grew up without a family and how much the lack of any family connection may have shaped her mindset and to some extent, business ethics.

From here, we are taken straight to the corporate might and commanding glory of Michelle, now a ferocious filthy rich entrepreneur and inspirational business speaker with no time and patience to euphemize her words—even on the big stage, she carries along her blatant and coarse-mouthed strong traits with her.

Soon, Michelle is ousted as a dodgy businesswoman, perhaps, a clear assault on the ethical delinquency of the world’s richest business owners.

A business rival and an ex-boyfriend, played by Game of Thrones’ fans favourite-Peter Dinklage aids in throwing Michelle into prison for inside trading.

After a short prison time, the once obnoxious wealthy woman comes out to nothing, as all her assets and bank accounts had been seized. Yet, she was optimistic, despite having no helping friends ready to assist her come back into the world of business ownership.

With no where to go or even safely pass the first night, Michelle ends up on the sofa of her former PA-Claire (played Kristen Bell), a single mom whom Michelle abused during her flourishing mogul days.

Of course the film is called ‘The Boss’ for a reason; even without anything and fresh out of prison, Michelle quickly got around and on the back of Claire ’s addictive sweet home-made brownies, she erected a business, to take over the local charity cookies market with Claire’s 10-year old daughter and a bunch of children as her aggressive Jehovah Witness style selling army.

With Michelle in charge, business soon grew and of course got the attention of her ace-rival Peter Dinklage, whose sole interest in Michelle’s business activities is to cut her down for evil done him in the past and also because of his romantic obsession with her.

Despite Peter Dinklage and Melissa McCarthy’s cat and mouse play, the two once held a weird love relationship together, which was in a chucklesome manner introduced through a flashback.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yakeigyf0vc

The story pushed on and ended on the tail of another dodgy dealing by Michelle, this time, not a legal crime but a moral one—-followed by an attempt to correct her wrong, an indication that even if prison could not teach the odious business minded a thing, the injected newly family love and connection were enough to invoke remorse and a self evaluation of her loyalty and business ethics.

There were some great scenes like when Michelle ended up in Claire’s bed, and a pre-date night scene where the two women beat each others “bosom”, with a walk in by Claire’s daughter making it seem a little awkward and more than what was actually happening.

But take out Melissa McCarthy out of  ‘The Boss’ and the film becomes pathetically dry—-even that cameo by Melissa’s director husband as her lawyer wouldn’t save the film from a complete tear down.

Melissa is surely the boss of Hollywood comedy, but she deserves not to only be in charge of her performances and hilarious lines, a complete package of a well written script, supported by other humorous personalities would make her entire film wear the boss chain.

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