Like A Boss, review: why not just call it, When Women in Business Hate Each Other?
Dir: Miguel Arteta. Cast: Tiffany Haddish, Rose Byrne, Salma Hayek, Karan Soni, Billy Porter, Jennifer Coolidge, Lisa Kudrow. 15 cert, 84 mins
Tiffany Haddish, Rose Byrne and Salma Hayek, in some finger-snapping comedy about sassy businesswomen ruling the roost? Like a Boss was a far more appealing prospect before it actually started. Something about the film's pathetically meagre opening shot – of a generic suburban dream home, platonically shared by a pair of go-getters (Haddish and Byrne) – is an instantaneous heart-sinker.
If the basic test all studio comedies must pass is, "did anyone bother here?", all evidence points to a brisk, deflating hell-to-the-no.
Main offender: this script. Manoeuvring its cast into situations where they pout, stab the air and swap C-grade insults in the absence of anything better to do, this wants to ride on the trashy coat-tails of the all-femme Ghostbusters remake and Girls Trip, but transports that energy into… the cut-throat world of cosmetics branding?
The skimpy premise has Mia (Haddish) and Mel (Byrne) as life-long BFFs and business partners, up to their necks in debt after overextending themselves with a start-up boutique in Atlanta. Only thanks to a buy-out from long-famed mega-mogul Claire Luna (Salma Hayek, vamping it up in a red Ann Margret wig) do they pick themselves off the floor, but Claire’s secret masterplan involves driving a wedge between these two and gobbling their assets.
The Haddish-Byrne alliance is a feeble fig leaf for what this film – written and directed by men, by the way – itches to be beneath, which is When Women in Business Hate Each Other. As soon as Claire has her claws in, the sniping and sabotage starts. It winds up like a lazier Bride Wars, with Byrne maliciously slipping red-hot chunks of ghost pepper, say, into her best friend’s ceviche platter and waiting for the gastric fireworks. Neither lead is on very fresh form, or manages to sell us on this ostensibly rock-solid friendship as anything but the film’s obligatory foundation: look, we really do like women, really!
It’s especially disappointing to see this crass product served up by Miguel Arteta, the Puerto Rican director whose better films, starting with Chuck and Buck (2000), have had a punchy independent spirit. He drew a lovely, soulful turn from Hayek as a downtrodden Mexicana in Beatriz at Dinner, an underseen comedy-drama from 2017. Her function here, on the other end of the subtlety scale, is to be a brassy caricature of voracious female ambition, swinging a golf club around her ridiculous white-tiered HQ and barking orders at the help.
She’s absurd, but if there’s one thing the film has going for it, it’s that rich Hayek burr as she masticates the bog-standard dialogue (“this is appaalllling!”) and just struts around owning the place. Perhaps this is undervaluing a reliably amiable Jennifer Coolidge, as Mia and Mel’s constant helper, and their back-room beautician Billy Porter, who has one theatrically tragic bit getting sacked in a restaurant which reminds you what simple inspiration looks like.
Is this three good things? Four, if we count Haddish briefly growling through a Tina Turner cover? We’re already in danger of giving Like a Boss way too much credit.
