A nasty piece of work, Darnell’s meanest moment (and one of the film’s funniest) involves a scene where she belittles a man’s dead wife. Based on a persona McCarthy fashioned many years ago at The Groundlings (a Los Angeles-based improv troupe), the script builds Darnell as a cutthroat bigwig who’s developed a tough-as-nails exterior due to a rough childhood (rejected by potential adoptive families), this upbringing leading to her take-no-prisoners attitude, Darnell willing to crush anyone that gets in her way. The chief pitfall in The Boss lies is within its titular character, the grotesquely exaggerated Michelle Darnell. In true Darnell fashion, the comeback-kid devises a crooked business model for a new venture, a brownie empire within Rachel’s Girl Scout-esque group, the Dandelions - a scheme that’s guaranteed to catapult Darnell back into the big leagues while giving Claire a real opportunity to build a solid future for her young one. With nowhere to go, Darnell tracks down her former assistant Claire who reluctantly agrees to let the turtleneck wearing tycoon crash at her apartment, which Claire shares with her daughter Rachel (Ella Anderson). After serving several ‘grueling’ months in white-collar prison, Darnell learns that her assets have been frozen, this debt grounding her once lavish way of life. For Michelle however, building an empire hasn’t always been an easy road, the businesswoman having to step on many along the way, including her mentor Ida Marquette (Kathy Bates), and lover Renault (Peter Dinklage), the latter whom exposes an insider-trading incident that lands the powerful entrepreneur in jail. With loyal assistant Claire (Kristen Bell) by her side, this financial rock star has been conquering the globe one day at a time after rising from the ashes like a phoenix (her spirit animal) to become the 47th-richest woman in the world. The Boss takes its cues from last year’s Get Hard (which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise seeing as this is a Gary Sanchez production), the focus being on Michelle Darnell (Melissa McCarthy), a self-made mogul who’s climbed all the way to the top thanks to her brutal go-getter attitude. ‘… and remember, if the house is nice, double the price.’ Co-scripting this riches-to-rags tale with her husband Ben Falcone, who also directs, the pair is probably to blame for the The Boss’ uneven tone and confusing premise, which sees adults clotheslining teenagers in bizarre street fights alongside schmaltzy messages about the importance of family. On a Melissa McCarthy rating scale, The Boss isn’t as bad as say, Tammy (2014), but then again, it doesn’t reach the heights of last year’s Spy a return-to-form for the 45-year-old actress.
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