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Melissa McCarthy is always The Boss
C-Melissa McCarthy has created a number of distinct, often hilarious characters in her rather brief movie career. Michelle Darnell, the fabulously wealthy, amoral self-empowerment entrepreneur turned jailbird that McCarthy plays in her new movie The Boss is actually one of McCarthy’s best creations. Unfortunately, McCarthy’s vision of Darnell soon gets buried under layers of gooey sentimentality and seemingly interminable, mediocre slapstick.
After her conviction for insider trading, Michelle loses almost all her possessions and, after her release from prison, moves in with her former assistant Claire Rawlins (Kristen Bell), the only person who is even grudgingly willing to help her. Michelle regains her zest for life when she attends a Dandelions troop meeting with Claire’s ten-year-old daughter Rachel (Ella Anderson). Seeing how poorly the Dandelions and their cookie sales are run, Michelle forms a rival group, Darnell’s Darlings, that uses her cutthroat business practices to sell competing brownies.
Melissa McCarthy created Michelle Darnell years ago while doing improv theater with the Groundlings and says that the tycoon is her favorite character. So it’s no surprise that when Darnell is on top of the world in the early scenes in The Boss, treating Claire with disdain, the movie is often hilarious. Later, Michelle’s snide sex-laced asides to Rachel and her fellow Dandelions as she plots her comeback are equally funny, if sometimes in R-rated poor taste in the presence of children. But The Boss lacks the courage of its convictions, choosing instead to give Michelle a hidden soft side. She winds up sincerely caring for Claire and Rachel, the family the orphan Michelle never had. The Boss never decides the best way to proceed with Michelle’s character, as she goes back and forth like a yo-yo between her old self and the kinder, gentler one. In addition, the movie contains too many overlong, unfunny slapstick sequences such as a samurai sword fight between Michelle and her ex-boyfriend Renault (Peter Dinklage), who was apparently cast in the mistaken notion that seeing him in a sword fight with Melissa McCarthy would be hilarious. Michelle Darnell is a great character played by the perfect actress. She should be promoted in the right movie; The Boss, on the other hand, should be fired.
Continue reading on The Boss: Mini-review
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