Boss is a bust, except for Hayek
If there’s one word to describe the girl power comedy “Like a Boss,” it’s “incomprehensible.” Structurally, industrially, philosophically, emotionally incomprehensible. What should have been an easy, breezy buddy comedy is rather a flabbergasting tone salad. Watching it feels like trying to read a half-completed Mad Libs: Rose Byrne, Tiffany Haddish, cosmetics … Salma Hayek, corporate takeover, Jennifer Coolidge, vagina jokes? You get the gist.
From scene to scene and moment to moment, “Like a Boss” is structurally indecipherable. Did writers Sam Pitman, Adam Cole-Kelly or Danielle Sanchez-Witzel never write the scenes that would have made this make sense, or were those scenes excised posthumously and lost to the sands of time? We may never know.
Existential questions also plague the existence of “Like a Boss,” such as, how on earth did indie darling Miguel Arteta, whose last two feature films were the complex character studies “Duck Butter” and “Beatriz at Dinner,” direct this? His imprint cannot be found anywhere within these awkward rhythms, befuddling beats and lazily framed shots.
Byrne and Haddish make for a fine on-screen pair, or would, had their characters been written at all. Mel (Byrne) and Mia (Haddish) are roommates, business partners and besties. And they have been life partners since girlhood who have gone on to create their own makeup line.
Their friendship, forged in the fires of neglectful and deceased parents, is put to the test when chaotic cosmetics maven Claire Luna (Hayek) sweeps into their lives with promises of lots and lots of money.
With a carrot orange wig, fake teeth, coloured contacts and an adorably threatening demeanour, whatever Hayek is doing (pronouncing Etsy “eetsy,” making the girls say “FIERCST,” whacking flower arrangements with a golf club), it’s working.
Her unhinged characterization of the over-the-top Claire Luna (“It means clear, BRILLIANT moon,” she declares) is just a shade off one of Tilda Swinton’s high-camp performances in Bong Joon-Ho’s “Snowpiercer” and “Okja.”
Too bad there’s just not enough of her.
But there’s just not enough of anything in “Like a Boss.” There’s no character development, and this thing feels torn to shreds.
“Like a Boss” wants to deal with the fraught ways in which women value themselves externally, through careers or children. But it doesn’t go deep enough to say anything profound. The film ends up saying that makeup should be like friendship: enhancing your best qualities while making you feel great.
It’s a nice idea, if only it wasn’t couched in capitalist consumerism. The ideas are there, but “Like a Boss” is too much of a mess for any of these messages to leave a mark.