See Video: Melissa McCarthy Does DMX, 'Pocahontas' During Lip Sync Battle Against Jimmy Fallon When Michelle is put in prison for insider trading and then emerges with nothing but a suitcase and the clothes on her back, Falcone decides to put Nina Simone singing “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” on the soundtrack, a jarring choice, because this movie is so far away from the power and depth of Simone’s singing voice that you can practically hear the diva growling and swearing from the grave at whoever licensed her vocals. In “The Boss,” McCarthy (who co-wrote with Falcone and Steve Mallory) always seems like a nice, wacky lady with bright eyes who you might meet at a bar or family gathering, and never a ruthless titan of the business world. McCarthy has chosen to wear a red, spiky hairdo and a variety of turtlenecks, and these two choices are exactly as far as she goes with this character: Red hair, turtlenecks, and corporate overkill, none of which McCarthy makes either convincing or funny. We next see Michelle in her adult guise as a financial guru in an overblown stage act that makes her look like a pop star (complete with flashing lights and back-up dancers), preaching the lure of selfish capitalism in an anti-family Ayn Rand style. See Video: Melissa McCarthy Swears Up a Storm in 'The Boss' Red-Band Trailer This is all done so hastily and carelessly that we don’t even find out much about why Michelle is being sent back, and this is symptomatic of “The Boss” as a whole: it isn’t comedy, and it isn’t drama, much less comedy-drama. In the prologue, we see McCarthy’s character Michelle Darnell sent back to an orphanage three separate times - in 1975, 1980, and 1985, all with appropriate music cues, of course - and Margo Martindale‘s nun Sister Aluminata keeps welcoming her back. There are nearly no laughs in this picture, and in a movie that bills itself as a comedy, usually you can see the performers working for laughs of some kind at least part of the time. The curious thing about “The Boss,” the second film that Melissa McCarthy has made with her husband Ben Falcone as writer-director (following “Tammy” in 2014), is how little it seems to be working to amuse.
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