The abusive behavior of the super rich has become a theme in this year’s run for the White House but was already embodied in a character Melissa McCarthy created for her live comedy improv shows. McCarthy and husband-director, Ben Falcone, wrote The Boss from McCarthy’s nasty alter ego, Michelle Darnelle, the Fortune 500 CEO and avatar of every greedy impulse. Michelle often seems like a stand-in for a real-life billionaire celebrity with a doubtful hairdo, Donald Trump.
Whether consciously or not, McCarthy fashioned Michelle as the Donald’s female counterpart. Like the renegade dealmaker, Michelle speaks in hostile Brooklyn cadences bleached of any ethnic accent. “Let me ask you one question,” is one of her Trumpian rhetorical devices. Of course, Michelle already has the answer and will accept no alternatives to her solution. She also has Trump’s cocksure grimace down pat. “The first rule of business? Pretend to negotiate and take what you want,” she insists.
McCarthy delivers her egomaniacal diatribes with Teflon-coated self-assurance, and isn’t above getting down in the dirt. The storyline delivers a comeuppance early on with Michelle’s arrest for insider trading and five-month sentence in a prison with a tennis court. The real penalty is the loss of her financial empire: Her accounts are frozen, her properties have been foreclosed, her companies fall to hostile takeovers.
Friendless without her fortune, and homeless, Michelle imposes on her faithful-if-flustered personal assistant, Claire (Kristen Bell), and on Claire’s young daughter, Rachel (Ella Anderson). Before long Michelle begins plotting her unlikely comeback by mass producing Claire’s delicious brownies and—stealing a page from the Girl Scouts handbook—sending adolescent girls door to door with boxes to sell. She wagers she could corner the brownie market by replicating Claire’s brownies in Shanghai at 19 cents a box.
Although the screenplay of The Boss is only sporadically funny (and is sometimes aggressively unfunny), McCarthy’s characterization of Michelle makes a memorable spectacle out of the “greed is good” ethos and shamelessness in the public spotlight.
The Boss
Melissa McCarthy
Kristen Bell
Directed by Ben Falcone
Rated R
