If ever there was a vehicle made for Melissa McCarthy's brand of loudmouth abrasive humour The Boss, a character she created over ten years ago, is it.
Finally an actual reason for characters to stand around and wait until she's finished insulting them with withering one-liners, like they do in The Heat, Spy, Identity Thief et al, here the characters/verbal abuse fodder have no choice but to take it because, well, she’s the boss. But oddly the screenplay (co-written by McCarthy), almost a comic version of Blue Jasmine/Streetcar, then goes and robs her of that.
Melissa McCarthy is Michelle Darnell, the 47th wealthiest woman in America. When she's sent to prison for insider trading she emerges penniless and in need of help from former put-upon assistant Claire (Bell), a single mum to tween Rachel (Ella Anderson). Crashing on Claire’s couch, Michelle gets the idea to market and sell Claire's tasty brownies with the help of Rachel’s Girl Scout group, which Michelle molds into a small army. However ex-lover Renault (Dinklage) is out for revenge and plans to snake the business out from under them.
Long before suspicions that The Boss isn’t McCarthy’s strongest comedy begin to nettle (just like the hit-and-miss Tammy, her previous collaboration with actor-turned-director, and husband, Ben Falcone), something else becomes bothersome: McCarthy’s turtlenecks. It's not immediately noticeable at first, even though they stretch up over the chin Robocop style, but by the time she’s applying spray tan and has a towel wrapped around her neck they become distracting. And it's not a plant that will pay off later – their constant presence is never explained.
With the zingers not hitting as hard as they usually do, and one wondering why her neck is being covered up, Falcone tries to get some laughs out of McCarthy’s other talent - physical comedy. While some of the pratfalls here are a hoot (the fold out couch, the Girl Scout battle), others are just rammed in to give an unfunny scene a lazy punchline (falling down steps). Sometimes Falcone and McCarthy set up something that could be quite funny (Bell warning that too much spray tan will darken McCarthy’s skin considerably) but there’s no follow through (it doesn't). Characters with comic potential are introduced (mentor Kathy Bates, bodyguard Cedric Yarbough, and Bell’s current boss, Eva Paterson) and then dropped; villain Dinklage disappears for long stretches.
Let’s hope Ghostbusters fares better.