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Director: Seth GordonScreenplay: Michael Markowitz; John Francis Daley; Jonathan GoldsteinPlayers: Jason Bateman; Charlie Day; Jason Sudeikis; Jennifer Aniston; Kevin Spacey; Donald Sutherland; Colin Farrell; Jamie Foxx.Genre: crime; comedyRating: ****Here is the must-see comedy of the season: three friends who meet periodically in a bar to catch up on each other’s lives share a common problem – they love their jobs but hate their bosses.  Awareness of their predicaments comes gradually.at the beginning of the film Nick Hendricks (Bateman) confides in voiceover to the viewer that he has been working in Sales for 8 weary years, slaving extremely hard for promotion. as he imparts this information we have an aerial view of an empty car park at 06h00 as Nick guides his car into a chosen slot.  He glides into the building, to be captured on camera at 06h02 and it is not long before Boss Dave Harken (Spacey) calls him into the office to shoot nasty innuendoes about employees’ late arrivals and whether the security man should be fired for allowing the timer on the camera to mislead the boss.Spacey is superb as the urbane, charming, but utterly ruthless Harken, who delights in holding out the promotional carrot of Senior Vice-President to Nick, in order to ensure a submissive underling, willing to work all the hours God gave, to please his implacable boss. Nick’s devotion to proving himself worthy even extends to missing his grandmother’s death in favour of slog on the job.the second friendin this ensemble trio, Dale Arbus (Day),  has a completely different problem. He is madly in love, engaged to be married, and has responded to a calling for dentistry, albeit as a humble Dental Assistant to sex-kitten Dr Julia Harris (Aniston), who brightens her day by making suggestive remarks over the prostrate torso of a client-victim; she takes ruthless pursuit of an objective to a very sophisticated level, having forged suggestive photographs of  Dale while he was under sedation in her dentist’s chair. He is on the sex-offender list, having emerged from a pub to urinate next to a children’s playground. regardless of the fact that this incident took place late at night when there were no cherubs frolicking on the swings, he is tied to the job for lack of opportunity of anything better, a fact which is totally exploited by his piranha of a boss.third member of the trio, Kurt Buckman (Sudeikis), listens amiably to the woes of the others over a beer because he actually loves his boss, Jack Pellit (Sutherland), a grandfatherly mentor who has promised Kurt a takeover as CEO when he retires. this earns him the undying loathing of Pellit’s son, Bobby (Farrell), who spends his days in the Men’s Toilet, snorting cocaine, and his nights in dalliance with anything in a skirt.  It is when Jack Pellit falls down dead in the car park, after ironically hinting another promise of inheritance to Accounts Manager Buckman, when suddenly all three are all miserable at being enslaved to the ultimate in unreasonable superiors.the success of this comedy lies in the naivety and ‘drone’ mentality of our three heroes: super-heroes they are not. In fact, after the initial moans at the bar, each returns to perpetual slavery with little prospect of salvation. When developments tip each one over the edge, their maudlin plot comes together to do away with their bosses, since delivery from suffering in the form of a new job seems unlikely in the face of recession. They meet a mate at the bar who has been unemployed for two years, having gone ‘down under’ with Lehman Brothers – he cannot even get a job waiting tables.Since the ironic twists in the story are half the fun, I cannot impart any more of the plot. the three friends are extremely funny in their efforts to secure a hit man, at an extremely cheap price. Car navigation android, Gregory, eventually guides them to the most dangerous bar in town to secure a professional to do the job. They meet ‘Motherfucker Jones’ (Foxx) and contract him for the bargain sum of $5000; each of them draws their committed amount from an ATM, presenting this to Jones in an impressive leather briefcase. When Jones opens the lid, the briefcase is not filled with bundles of notes; instead one tiny bundle knocks around in the middle of an empty case. once Jones has pocketed the money, he tells them calmly that the amount qualifies them only for his services as a ‘Murder Consultant”. For $5000, his advice is brief: they should adopt the approach taken in the Danny de Vito film, Throw Momma from the Train.  this is not taken well by our Three Musketeers but they have little else to consider.there are several cameo roles which are equally amusing. Large Margie, at Pellit’s Chemicals, is huge and believed to be pregnant; Bobby Pellit orders Kurt to fire her on the grounds that she is not attractive to look at.  Farrell is unrecognizable as Pellit, continuously fired-up on cocaine and running on meanness and spite. the unemployed friend, wandering round the bar, willing to do anything for N$50, the cocky stuffing completely knocked out of him, is an amusing stereotype. Foxx as the Murder Consultant is a hoot, an inept criminal whose worst crime, it transpires, is to be caught at illegal video piracy in a cinema, for which he received the heaviest punishment possible. He is but one step ahead of our bumbling worker drones but one step is enough to bamboozle them all out of $5000.at one point, the complications of our heroes’ situations seem absolutely insoluble so when a completely contrived conclusion satisfactorily resolves all the problems the viewer is absolutely relieved and willing to overlook the contrivances. the script is witty and the plot contains bawdiness which may be unacceptable to some, but nevertheless I guarantee that you will not leave this film without a few hearty guffaws at situations with which most of us are familiar, one way or the other. the only difference is that in the real world, one endures a horrible boss, in the hope of ultimate survival, and is rarely liberated, hence the expression ‘Dead men’s shoes’.