‘The Boss’: A serviceable showcase for Melissa McCarthy
The result is a serviceable comedy that’s not on the level of “Bridesmaids” or “Spy,” but certainly a grade above McCarthy movies like “Identity Thief” or “Tammy.”
“The Boss” gets off to a hilarious start, as foster families keep dumping the young Michelle Darnell at the convent, where Sister Aluminata (Margo Martindale, pitch perfect) tries to reassure Michelle that she’s still a special child who will find the right family.
[...] we fast-forward a few decades, when Michelle (McCarthy), now a wealthy self-help titan, is dispensing moneymaking advice to a packed crowd at Chicago’s United Center.
After her stint behind bars, she inexplicably moves in with mousy ex-assistant Claire (Kristin Bell) and comes up with a comeback business idea: a brownie empire that would eat into the Dandelions’ (think Girl Scouts) cookie-selling fortune.
The pleasant but uninteresting Claire gets a lot of screen time as the straight person to Michelle, which only emphasizes the lack of comic chemistry between Bell and McCarthy, except for an amusing bra-fitting scene.
[...] after a memorable street fight with Michelle over cookie-selling territory, Helen pretty much vanishes, and the film veers off into a hostile takeover of the brownie enterprise, followed by a ham-fisted office stunt in which Michelle duels it out with Renault.
When she visits a country club to enlist the help of former associates, only to be rudely dismissed, her tirade is an exquisite mix of vulgarity, desperation, chutzpah and clumsiness.