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Like A Boss

Tyler Harlow

Starring: Tiffany Haddish, Rose Byrne, Salma Hayek, Billy Porter, Jennifer Coolidge, Karan Soni, Ari Graynor, Jessica St. Clair, Ryan Hansen, Jimmy O. Yang, Jacob Latimore, Natasha Rothwell

Director: Miguel Arteta

Mel (Rose Byrne) and Mia (Tiffany Haddish), best friends since middle school, have built their make up company from the ground up with co-workers Barrett (Billy Porter) and Sydney (Jennifer Coolidge). While Mia is focused on coming up with new products, Mel is growing increasingly concerned with their debt and is worried their business is going under. When cosmetics mogul Claire Luna (Salma Hayek) offers to buy their company, it could prove to not only bring the downfall of their business but their friendship as well.


Like A Boss feels completely at home in January, a month reserved for films that studios have little to no faith in, are of low quality, and needed to be cleared off their books. However, the quality here is so staggeringly bad that I'm amazed this got released at all.


The script is littered with many unfunny jokes, written or improvised, that make me wonder how so many talented actresses and actors got tricked into doing the movie. The movie often goes long stretches where no jokes hit at all, causing the movie to drag. Comedies should not drag at all, and for such a mercifully short run time of only an hour and twenty three minutes, this drags often. Everything feels like a first draft joke that no one decided to fix.


The girls' friendship also crumbles way too easily. For the little backstory given to Mel and Mia, they seem to have gone through an awful lot of tough times together, so for their friendship's foundation to be broken so easily is baffling.


Tiffany Haddish, who broke onto the scene with so much force in 2017 with Girls Trip, still hasn't found a worthwhile follow up for such a promising debut. Rose Byrne, who has proven time and time again she can be downright hilarious, is downright wasted in the film. It doesn't help that her character is continually, and quite obviously, being taken advantage of by Claire Luna. Speaking of Claire Luna, Salma Hayek gets to play a very cartoonish and over the top villain. She collected a nice paycheck for this. Despite not having much to really work with, Billy Porter and Jennifer Coolidge make the most of their limited roles, inject some life into the film, and get the best jokes. You've seen Billy Porter's "Witness my tragic moment" speech in the trailer and that is the funniest moment in the movie. Jennifer Coolidge just gets to spout weird dialogue that mostly works because it brings a weird energy to the very unfunny proceedings.


The comedy bar has already been set low for the year thanks to Like A Boss. It's such a shame because everyone in this is very talented and is capable of so much more. The good news is that things can only go up from here.


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