There is not much to like as a practicing Catholic about Horrible Bosses (2011).  As usual, I will go into more detail about the plot in the following paragraph.  For now, just know it is a film about three guys working for separate companies that have monsters for supervisors.  Their solution for dealing with their situations is to murder them.  Again, those details will come in a moment.  Because this is a comedy, the people in charge need to be shown to be so outrageously bad that it makes our protagonists look justified in their actions.  There are many of us who have wished ill upon those signing our paychecks, but God calls us to bear with our struggles instead of resorting to violence to solve them.  Of course, you do not need to be a Christian to know that killing another, no matter the circumstances, is wrong.  It is Faith that gives the fullest reason for not doing so.  It is also Faith that is absent from the movie.  Yet, there are a few snippets of alignment with Christianity that, like others of its ilk, keeps The Legionnaire going.

Understandably, it is difficult to keep going to your job when you have Horrible Bosses.  The first of our trio whose plight we are introduced to is Nick Hendricks (Jason Bateman).  He has been slowly matriculating through the ranks at his desk job, taking every early and late shift with the expectation that toeing the line will lead to promotion.  This would be logical if his immediate supervisor were not David “Dave” Harken (Kevin Spacey).  Dave nitpicks Nick’s performance, and manipulates the underling by holding out the hope of advancement.  Next up is the perhaps too affable (with the ladies) Kurt Buckman (Jason Sudeikis).  His work environment is actually great as long as the owner of the chemical business where he is employed remains alive.  That is Jack Pellit (Donald Sutherland), by the way, who clearly favors Kurt over his coke addicted son, Bobby Pellit (Colin Farrell).  The third is Dale Arbus (Charlie Day), who spoke to this Catholic’s heart when he narrates his wish that from the time he was a child he wanted to be a husband.  The person who could disrupt his fulfillment of this vocation is Dr. Julia Harris, D.D.S. (Jennifer Aniston), the dentist to whom he is an assistant.  She is constantly sexually harassing him, a problem that his friends Kurt and Nick do not understand.  God bless Dale, though, for remaining faithful to Stacy (Lindsay Sloane), his fiancée.  You might think Dale’s solution would be to quit.  What prevents him from doing so is the fact that he is a registered sex offender.  This sounds bad, but it stems from him drunkenly urinating at night on a school playground.  Despite the evident mix-up, Dr. Harris is the only one that will hire him, a fact she uses to blackmail him into tempting him into doing her wicked will.  Nick is similarly trapped.  When the long-awaited award for his long hours is supposed to come along, Dave instead takes the position.  Nick musters the courage to say something, threatening to quit, but Dave replies by saying that he will make sure Nick never signs on with another enterprise in their industry.  Kurt does not have to face the risks.  As Bobby takes over the running of the company with Jack’s passing, his drug addled brain leads him to tell Kurt to fire a variety of people who do not deserve to lose their positions.  Seeing that things could get worse, he decides to stay and do what he can.  In the three friends’ idle bar chat, they discuss how their situations could be solved if their bosses died.  The notion is just as quickly dismissed, but the next day Dale comes to the other two, enthusiastic to commit a crime.  He has had a change of heart because Dr. Harris has said that unless he sleeps with her, she will reveal incriminating photographs she took of him while she did a dental procedure on him and he was knocked out.  Kurt readily agrees, but Nick is a little more reluctant.  In any case, they know nothing about how to accomplish their goal.  Coming up with a plan is first left to Dale, who finds on Craig’s List a person doing “wet work,” which he wildly misinterprets . . . and I will leave it at that short description.  Next to chime in is Kurt, who decides to ask Gregory (voiced by Brian George), Kurt’s car global positioning system (GPS), to guide them to a rough part of town.  After a few more comedic moments, they are led to Dean Jones (Jamie Foxx).  He has a nickname I will not repeat, but after giving the ex-con $5,000, he suggests that they kill each other’s bosses and make it look like an accident.  This sounds simple, but these three are not master criminals.  Sensibly enough, though, they decide to do what they refer to as a “recon phase.”  This involves going over to each of their supervisors’ houses.  The first is Bobby’s place where they find a lot of cocaine and, more importantly, the younger Pellit’s cell phone.  Kurt takes the device with him and it is on to Dave’s mansion.  Unfortunately, they have to make a hasty retreat when Dave encounters Dale suspiciously waiting outside.  Dave suspects Dale of sleeping with his wife, Rhonda (Julie Bowen), of whom Dave is extremely jealous.  In their haste to retreat, Kurt drops Bobby’s phone in Dave’s house.  Meanwhile, Dale revives Dave, who had been having to a severe peanut allergy reaction from a sandwich wrapper Dale dropped.  It had not been perfect, but they feel they have enough information to do the awful deed.  The following night, Dale is set to put nuts into Dave’s shampoo, Nick is going to poison Bobby’s cocaine, and Kurt is supposed to take care of Dr. Harris.  You can predict how this last one went, or more accurately, did not happen.  Meanwhile, Dale and Nick decide it is not worth the potential trouble.  However, before Nick can leave, Dave arrives at Bobby’s place and murders Kurt’s boss.  Nick panics and is caught by traffic cameras fleeing from the scene.  Still, when the police locate the three, they cannot hold them for lack of evidence.  Dale has apparently watched a lot of crime dramas.  Getting some more advice from Dean, they take a tape recorder to Dave’s house, which happens to be on the night of his birthday party.  Ineptly, they give the device to Kurt, who ends up going after Rhonda.  Thus, despite getting Dave to admit to what he did, they are unable to get it recorded.  Worse, Dave learns of Kurt and Rhonda and a car chase ensues.  It ends with the police on the scene of a wreck, getting there just after Dave repeating his guilt.  This time, it is Gregory that gets it all on file.  Our three friends are cleared, and they are able to return to normal work environments.

I will not enumerate how Dale is able to settle his situation at the end of Horrible Bosses.  Indeed, there is a lot not worth repeating from the film.  The moments that specifically interested this Catholic reviewer are the one I discussed in the synopsis, and Nick’s discussion of how one needs to put up with a lot of crap in order to get anywhere in life.  This is an oversimplification, but that is comedy for you, I guess.  As is so often the case, the main problem is modern society.  We tend to take pride too far, which, by the way, is one of the so-called deadly sins.  They are referred to as such because an excess of any one of them could lead to a permanent separation from God.  That means hell, which is not worth any amount of so-called comeuppance against those who torment us.  What I am coming to in a roundabout way is that there are other ways of dealing with, well, horrible bosses, or horrible people in general.  It is not necessarily about taking abuse, though there is grace in doing so while remaining faithful to God.  This is having a martyr’s heart.  The dictionary definition of the word “martyr” makes direct reference to being killed for religious reasons.  Of course, our three are not in mortal danger, but they are suffering.  This is typically a perquisite for martyrdom, and it has resulted in sainthood for many men and women throughout Church history.  Unlike our protagonists, they bore their troubles without complaint and obtained the victory that is eternity with God.  This trumps getting even with anyone in this life, though it is admittedly more difficult for many to accept.  Nobody ever said Faith is easy.  Yet, it is the easy path that Dale, Kurt, and Nick choose, though it may not seem like it.  Sin is always easier, and to be clear, though it seems justified, that is what they are committing.  I encourage and pray that you make the harder decision because, in this life or the next, it will always be worth it.

The subject matter in Horrible Bosses means that I do not recommend it for any audience.  There are many sexual innuendos and other such situations, not to mention the foul language.  There might be a chuckle or two in it, but they are not frequent enough to dedicate any time to waiting for them.  Skip.