Horrible Bosses ***

Director: Seth Gordon

Cast: Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, Charlie Day

Kevin Spacey, Colin Farrell, Jennifer Aniston

Julie Bowen, Jamie Foxx

Since time immemorial, humans have rebelled against authority figures or despotic members of their hierarchy. From entire countries and cruel monarchs, the arrival of seemingly uniform democracy made it tougher for those in power to abuse their subjects, which is why this model is now mostly used in two places: school and work.

These are the two instances when not even being right gives you any benefit, how can you argue first, with a system that will give you and education and provide a job, and then with the very workplace you were trained to excel at?

Insurrection in either of these two means you either become an outcast or starve to death, what to do then when the situations get simply out of control?

Horrible Bosses is not the answer to the complicated ethical conundrum exposed in the previous paragraphs but as an accurate portrayal of men-children caught in a cycle of senseless torture, it might be one of the cleverest movies to come out of the harsh economic times the world has been through.

Essentially the film shows us the ghastly work situations of three men whose bosses specialty is creating living hell on Earth.

There's Nick Hendricks (Bateman), an executive whose boss, Dave Harken (Spacey), tortures him with the promise of a promotion that never materializes, while chiding him for being two minutes late, making him work inhuman hours and tricking him into drinking booze early in the morning.

Kurt Buckman (Sudeikis) is a pleasing accountant who has to deal with his exemplary boss' (Donald Sutherland) son, Bobby Pellitt (Farrell), after the elder Pellitt dies of a heart attack. Bobby not only loathes Kurt, he's also a cocaine addict who en joys the company of Asian escorts.

Last, there's dental assistant Dale Arbus (Day) whose perfect life with his fiancee (Lindsay Sloane) is only threatened by the insatiable libido of his boss Julia Harris (Aniston) who tries to coerce him into having sex with her.

The three poor chums, who also happen to be life long friends, decide that the only way to make this stop is to eliminate the very source of their trouble: they must kill their bosses. They hire the shady looking Motherfucker Jones (Foxx) to be their "murder consultant" and then set out, a la Hitchcock, to kill each other's bosses. This of course leads to a large amount of hilarity and truly ridiculous situations.

It's funny to think about it but the very premise of this movie would've had a different genre connotation a couple of decades ago. The very notion that an everyman is set to kill his boss just screams noir and sends images of Bob Mitchum in a trench coat and a cackling Dick Widmark pushing ladies down a staircase.

How and when murder became hilarious instead of horrifying? That is the question. Then again, not really because what Horrible Bosses aims at goes beyond "let's make fun of these goofballs' failed murder plans", it actually makes us wonder how deep in crap we are that we have begun to think of lives as commodities we can bargain and deal with.

In a way then, this film is just as horrifying as anything that might've sprung from the WWII-bruised minds of the greatest film noir masters. The film explores the notions of survival in a very immature way (it's either murder or $20 handjobs for these guys...) but perhaps unintentionally it taps into a very primal conundrum which director Gordon (if you haven't seen his Donkey Kong documentary, what are you waiting for?) handles with dexterity and much needed grace.

Despite its rooting in the Judd Apatow school of immature adult men coming to terms with existence, Gordon seems to find a voice of his own and delivers the hilarity with politically incorrect, almost passive aggressive darkness; the very name of Motherfucker Jones calls for a whole essay on the blaxploitaition movement, and as much as Gordon tries to pretend he's just another comedy director, his movie references and twisted homages tell us that he's a filmmaker to watch. You don't see Hitchcock, Danny de Vito and Kiss Me Deadly thrown in together into a single reference so frequently, do ya?

If there is one thing the film fails at is establishing why these guys need to be friends in the same place, something noir-ish would've been more benefited from the pros of anonymity, heck the very name of Strangers on a Train says it! So why do we need to know they are members of this boy club? Do they allow other members? it would've been interesting to see how Gordon developed his characters under the stress of unfamiliarity.

Other than that, the film shines for its excellent portrayal of hard economic times, the refusal to grow up and you haven't lived until you see, the usually too-good-to-be-true, Jennifer Aniston spraying Charlie Day's crotch trying to figure out whether he's cut or not. She gives the comedic performance of the year!

Hall Pass **

Director: Bobby Farrelly, Peter Farrelly

Cast: Owen Wilson, Jason Sudeikis

Jenna Fischer, Christina Applegate, Joy Behar

J.B. Smoove, Stephen Merchant, Richard Jenkins

Everyone in Hall Pass looks terrible. Leading men Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis sport crow's feet and physiques that lack fitness to say the least. Jenna Fischer shows strange sunburns and Richard Jenkins has the worst tan of all time.

Perhaps the Farrelly brothers thought that exposing actors as they "are" would give their film a shot at achieving some sort of emotional authenticity but not really...

What we end up with instead is an attempt of the crass filmmakers at creating the kind of comedies that Judd Apatow has excelled at during the last decade. Apatow's films display men-children forced to mature, usually by strong women, who shake up their hum drum lives with their knowledge, genitalia and love for them.

This is the only thing Hall Pass has in common with something like say The 40-Year Old Virgin, and it's that the film assumes that women were created to teach men lessons, even when this means they have to reduce their personalities to often overbearing examples of "she's being a bitch because she loves me".

In this case, Wilson and Sudeikis, play the horny husbands of Fischer and Applegate respectively. The two friends spend their days checking out women and fantasizing about how much they would get laid if they were single again (obviously Fischer and Applegate's characters always have headaches and come up with excuses to avoid intercourse with them).

When their hormonal behavior leads to social embarrassment, the women decide it's time to give them a "hall pass": they get an entire week off of marriage to satiate their sexual appetite.

The film then follows the guys as they spend their week attempting to have sex and usually failing. This obviously will lead them to realize that, like Dorothy, they have no other place like home, but before that they take part in Farrelly stunts that involve farting, African American penises, psychotic DJs and Jenkins playing an expert ladies' man.

At the center of the film there are some signs of something deeper than we'd expected and this is mostly seen through Applegate's character, who takes on a pseudo-affair of her own with a younger man.

Watching the talented comedienne you can't help but wish she was in a better movie, because she provides her character with melancholy traits that seem out of place in the rest of this frat-boy fest. Even if her character receives a ridiculous punishment for exploring her own sexual liberty (something that says more about the latent misogyny in the movie than its attempt at cherishing married love) she's perhaps the only time the movie ever comes close to achieving humanity.

The rest is a mildly funny excuse for defending immature male behavior filtered through humor that could've been ruder and less cringe worthy because of its forced warmth.

Going the Distance ***

Director: Nanette Burstein
Cast: Drew Barrymore, Justin Long
Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Ron Livingston, Natalie Morales
Jim Gaffigan, Christina Applegate

There is something about Going the Distance that probably makes it the kind of movie you either really like or just completely despise. Something about how ordinary it is makes it feasible for you to be swept off your feet or offended by its brand of comedy.
It's a basic story about boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy tries to get back girl but it does so in a way that seems unique if only because it's so lacking in the kind of cynicism that rules the genre nowadays.
By no means the savior of the romantic comedy, at least it's refreshing because it buys its own clichés so much that you can't really accuse it of being too smart for its own good or too naive.
It tells the story of Erin (Barrymore) and Garrett (Long), she's interning at an NYC newspaper, he works for a music studio. They meet on a random night after an incident involving a Centipede machine and a few scenes later we see Erin trying to sneak out of Garrett's room after what seems like another one night stand.
But Garrett has the clever idea of asking Erin to join him for breakfast and pretty soon they realize they might wanna see each other again. They make things clear from the start though: he's just gotten out of a relationship (with Gossip Girl Leighton Meester who has a hilarious cameo) and she's due back in San Francisco to attend grad school after the summer is done.
Despite their best knowledge they end up falling in love and then must endure the long distance relationship mentioned in the title.
What follows is a series of hilarious moments in which we see them Skyping, texting, phone sexing and paying each other the random visit in order to see if they can make this last.
The movie isn't about long distance relationships as much as it is about people holding on desperately to whatever humanity they can find in these times.
That statement might make it sound like a profound study of love but the truth is that the movie perhaps would never even dare think of itself that way.
It's interesting to see the way in which the director gives the film a natural flow; the characters don't talk like smartasses and even their vulgarity seems part of who they are, as opposed to being profane for the sake of shocking, like most "adult" comedies do (you will love hearing Drew Barrymore say "fuck" and "dick" without blushing).
The way in which it deals with sex is refreshing (it's not an issue but it's not vapid either) and while it might not be the greatest romantic comedy ever, its approach to how people act nowadays feels groundbreaking.
Something about the characters' seeming immaturity gives Going the Distance enough punch to make you laugh your ass off while providing it with the sort of melancholy that springs from laughing to keep from crying.
In its apparent craziness and nothingness, the film taps onto the terrifying fact that even if dating has changed and sex is no longer taboo, even the most skeptical find themselves yearning for "the one".
It might not be The Way We Were but except from an overdone scene featuring Applegate (who otherwise is a true scene stealer) this movie might just steal your heart.