Directed by: Miguel Arteta
Release date: January 10th, 2020
Rating: 4/10
Like a Boss is a comedy starring Tiffany Haddish, Rose Byrne, and Salma Hayek about two best friends (Haddish and Byrne) that start a makeup company together and partner with Clara Luna (Hayek) a makeup industry titan. Throughout the movie their friendship is tested as they try and face this new challenge.
I do not like this movie. Going in, I figured it for an adult comedy film a la 21 Jump Street or Superbad. Instead, what we get is two hours of a muddled plot with a few jokes thrown in. The story doesn’t make a lot of sense when you really think about it, and the jokes aren’t very funny. You can follow the plot well enough but when it comes down to why these two are fighting, it doesn’t make a lot of sense. Even if it did, they don’t stay mad at each other for very long, so there isn’t much of a conflict at all.
My number one issue with the film is that it isn’t very funny. A few jokes made me chuckle here and there but for a comedy movie there isn’t a lot of comedy. It can’t decide if it’s going to be a comedy with a plot in it (21 Jump Street) or a drama that has some jokes and is funny. Because of that we get a movie that is neither.
Another issue I have is that it should not be rated R. I just don’t understand it. There only reason is for the language that they use. That’s it. They say the F word a handful of times and it gets and R rating. From a viewers perspective, this isn’t really an issue, but the studio could have reached a wider audience, thus made more money, by doing some editing and making it PG-13. There isn’t any subject matter or jokes (save one or two) that really deserve an R rating.
In the end, this movie was never going up for Academy Awards so I can see why the filmmakers didn’t put as much effort into it. It’s a movie that’s marketed towards adult women that will see it with their friends on a Friday night when there’s nothing else to do. That being said, I think it could’ve been better; any if something can be better, why shouldn’t it be?