My Boss’s Daughter

Director: David Zucker,
Starring: Mark Aisbett, Ashton Kutcher, Jon Abrahams, Tara Reid, Molly Shannon, Terence Stamp, Andy Richter, Tyler Labine, Michael Madsen, Ryan Zwick, Patrick Cranshaw, Angela Little, David Koechner, Carmen Electra, Ron Selmour, ,

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DVD Review

Ashton Kutcher is the current flavor of the month. The success of his MTV show, Punk’d and the Dude, Where’s My Car? (2000) movie has catapulted this young actor onto the hot list. It also has studios scrambling to release anything and everything he’s done in the hopes of capitalizing on his sudden fame. This has resulted in the release of My Boss’s Daughter (2003), a standard situational comedy in the tradition of recent gross-out comedies like Road Trip (2000) and Old School (2003). More importantly, this film asks the burning question: what the hell are Terence Stamp and Michael Madsen doing in this movie?

Tom Stansfield (Kutcher) is a young researcher at a large publishing company in Chicago. He pines for his boss’ daughter (Reid) but also lives in fear of his tyrannical superior (Stamp), a man not above firing his newly hired secretary (Shannon) for making bitter coffee. When she asks Tom to housesit for her, he agrees unaware that she is going off to a party while he encounters all sorts of strange people at the house. First up is the fired secretary who shows up hoping to get her job back. Things quickly go downhill from there as his boss’ near-do-well son (Richter) shows up with an evil drug dealer (Madsen) in tow. Pretty soon things go from bad to worse.

Ashton Kutcher is a good sport and gamely plays along with the ludicrous script. Dave Foley grimaces in pain in every scene he’s in as if doing this film was some sort forced community service for a crime he did not commit. Tara Reid looks bored as if she was already thinking of her next movie role. To his credit, Terence Stamp actually looks like he’s having a blast in the role as he gets to play a complete bastard. Michael Madsen has fallen a long way since Reservoir Dogs (1992). Let’s hope he redeems himself with Kill Bill, Vol. 2 (2004).

In some respects, My Boss’s Daughter is critic proof. Any kind of critique is useless for a film that has no aspirations but to be anything more than a goofy time waster. Most of the actors are going through the motions and have nothing to work with while the direction is pedestrian at best. The problem with this movie is that it doesn’t know whether it wants to be a screwball comedy or a black comedy. It pushes and pulls between these two genres in schizophrenic fashion, never fully making its mind up on what it wants to be. It’s as if the director of Road Trip tried to make a Fellini film and this was the bastard child: a parade of freaks (a girl with a bleeding head wound and an owl named O.J. hopped up on cocaine) that torment our hero who puts up with way more crap than any normal person ever would.

Special Features:

There is the standard outtakes reel of blown lines and physical pratfalls which is strictly you-had-to-be-there material.

“A Look Behind My Boss’s Daughter” has such a short running time that it barely qualifies as a making of featurette. This is strictly standard press kit stuff as everyone gushes about working on the film.

It’s scary when the audition reel for Tara Reid reading a scene with Ashton Kutcher is longer than the making of featurette. What’s odd is that after all the films Reid has done she had to actually audition for this movie? Ouch.

My Boss’ Daughter is a formulaic sitcom movie that tries to pushes the boundaries of good taste but doesn’t have the cojones to go all the way. Hopefully, Terence Stamp and Michael Madsen were paid well for doing this movie because their talents are completely wasted here.

J.D. Lafrance

J.D. is a freelance writer who is currently doing research for a book on the films of Michael Mann. He likes reading anything written by Jack Kerouac, James Ellroy, J.D. Salinger, Harlan Ellison or Thomas Pynchon. J.D. is currently addicted to the T.V. series 24 and enjoys drinking a lot of Sprite. This is not a blatant plug for the beverage but if they ever decided to give him a lifetime supply he certainly wouldn’t turn them down.
view all DVD reviews by JD Lafrance

 

Rating: 45%

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