The Boss stoops to a new comedy low

The Boss opened at No. 1 this weekend, narrowly squeezing out Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice atop the box-office charts. Successful comedies vary widely in their ingredients, of course, but writing explicit language into children’s roles and knocking women around for laughs shouldn’t be parts of the recipe.

Michelle Darnell (Melissa McCarthy, who on Saturday night became the first woman to win MTV’s Comic Genius Award), is a flamboyant and wealthy entrepreneur. After spending five months in prison for insider trading, she learns all of her assets have been confiscated. Claire (Kristen Bell), once Michelle’s down-to-earth personal assistant, reluctantly allows her former boss to move into her small apartment with her and her sensitive 11-year-old daughter, Rachel (Ella Anderson).

When Michelle tastes Claire’s delicious homemade brownies, she sees an opportunity to rebuild her fortune. Michelle transforms Claire’s kitchen into a brownie factory and plunders Rachel’s scout group, the Dandelions, to find employees. She outfits her middle-school-aged workforce, “Michelle’s Darlings”, in denim vests and red berets, and she teaches the girls mob-like sales tactics.

One Dandelion’s mother, Helen (Annie Mumolo), mobilizes the remaining Dandelions in an effort to thwart the Darlings’ takeover of the Dandelions’ cookie-sales turf. Michelle’s ex-lover, Renault (Peter Dinklage), a wealthy business owner, through financial interference looks to take revenge on Michelle for past emotional hurts. To no surprise, the film pits Dinklage’s dwarfism against McCarthy’s plus-sized build.

The Boss (rated R for sexual content, language, and brief drug use) undercuts its one potential redeeming quality—its treatment of Michelle’s struggle to overcome her foster-home childhood to bond with her new “family,” Claire and Rachel. Instead, the film splashes around in a sloppy mishmash of campiness, slapstick, and awkward humor.

The film’s greatest drawback is how it takes ironically juxtaposed mismatches to tasteless extremes. Michelle’s initial coarse outburst at a scout meeting humorously sends a shockwave of surprise through the mousy mothers. But by the 10th time, especially as expletives burble from the girls’ lips, as well, the language has long become oppressive.

The Boss seems to target one particular girl for body-shaming. Michelle is impressed when across a schoolyard she first espies Chrystal, a tall girl with an athletic physique whom she wants to draft as the Darlings’ muscle.

“Who’s that beast?” she asks Rachel. For the rest of the film, though, Michelle refers unflatteringly to Chrystal’s brawn, what for many preteen girls is a socially painful reality. Since the film doesn’t portray Michelle as a villain, The Boss seems to OK this sort of mockery.

The film crosses other lines into indecency. With directorial restraint, the two rival scout troops’ rumbling in a Chicago alley could have been a nice bit of silliness. But the fighting devolves into brutal combat. One girl yanks off another girl’s ponytail, and in slow motion Michelle straight-arms a girl half her size in the throat, sending her sprawling to the ground.

The street battle, Michelle’s tumble down a flight of stairs and other hard falls, and two instances where a bed catapults a woman into a wall all add up to a high level of violence toward girls and women. Is being an on-screen punching bag the equality actresses are seeking in the film industry?