Like A Boss: Crude Schtick and Stupid Script Torpedo Female Empowerment Message

By Liam Lacey

Rating: C

Mia (Tiffany Haddish) and Mel (Rose Byrne) are roommates, best friends, and business partners in an Atlanta make-up company called Mia and Mel’s. Their relationship, formed in their teens, is tested when cosmetics mogul Claire Luna (Salma Hayek in an orange wig, false teeth, and gravity-defying push-up bra) wants to ruin their friendship and seize control of the business.

Haddish’s character is the creative side of the partnership in her familiar, raunchy, unfiltered mode (“My PayLess bogos is about to be in a meeting in your ass!”) with Byrne as the partnership’s straitlaced business manager and compulsive people pleaser. There are also eager performances from sidekick characters — Jennifer Coolidge as the cluelessly vulgar store assistant Sidney and Billy Porter (TV’s POSE) as the fastidious make-up mixer — but the movie’s coating of light comic schtick can’t conceal the flaws of Like A Boss’ script and execution.

Conceived shortly after Haddish’s exuberant breakthrough with Girls Trip (the highest-grossing comedy of 2017) with a distinct debt to the girl raunch of Bridesmaids, Like A Boss is hobbled by jarring scene transitions, crude stereotypes, and self-contradictory messages.

While the tony-looking shop apparently caters to an enthusiastic posse of married ladies-who-drink, we soon learn that the company is a half-million dollars in debt. Their one success has been a portable make-up kit called One Night Stand, which has earned the attention of Hayek’s Claire, and her mega-company, Oviedo Cosmetics.

Though Claire promotes herself as the store’s saviour, she immediately pits Mel against Mia so she can assume control of their business. Her tactic is initially successful… and then, it’s only a matter of time before the two women realize how much they really mean to each other. There’s a gross-out physical comedy scene in a cooking class where Mel sabotages Mia, then an angry break-up, followed by flipcard-quick scenes in which friends remind them how much they mean to each other and they, you know, make up.

Apart from the overall endorsement of women’s friendships — and the credible warmth between the two likeable stars — the script’s feminist message is hopelessly muddled. In crude terms, we have the familiar contrast between Mia and Mel’s female-empowerment cosmetics approach: “We want (women) to shine from the inside out!” opposed to queen bee Claire’s corporate agenda to “inspire the ugly people to buy their way into gorgeousness.”

Competing with Mel and Mia for Claire’s investment dollars are a pair of bros (Jimmy O. Yang and Ryan Hansen, both wasted) pushing their brand of misogynistic “Cherry Pop” lipstick. In the film’s best-forgotten finale, Mel and Mia confront Claire in a product launch with their morally superior inclusive message. All this underscores the familiar perversity of the femvertising trend: Yes, all women are inherently beautiful… but would it kill you to apply a little blush?

The directing here is credited to Miguel Arteta, best known for a series of sharply scripted black comedies by Mike White (Chuck and Buck, The Good Girl, Beatriz at Dinner). In contrast, Like A Boss appears to have followed the Judd Apatow process of gleaning moments from the actors’ takes and constructing the story in the editing. Clocking in at a brisk 83 minutes, it’s uncomfortable to imagine what scenes were left out.

Like A Boss. Directed by Miguel Arteta. Screenplay: Sam Pitman and Adam Cole-Kelly; story by Danielle Sanchez-Witzel. Starring Tiffany Haddish, Rose Byrne, Jennifer Coolidge, Billy Porter and Salma Hayek. Opens wide January 10.