My Boss's Daughter

I didn't like one bit of this movie. It was more like a Greek Tragedy play than a modern day comedy. It made me feel bad. Feel bad because the jokes were pretty bad, the plot was pretty bad and it felt like it was going to go on forever. Add to that, that we have seen this type of movies for years. We know how it's going to end. It tries to be somewhat serious at times. The movie brings up some issues that would better be left in dramas or TV Series. Not in comedy films, featuring Ashton Kutcher and Tara Reid.

The plot is about Tom Stansfield, that is working for some big publishing company. He has some great ideas for books, but is afraid of his boss, who happens to be a huge monster. At one point he starts to like this girl, who also works for the company. She asks Tom if he could watch her and her fathers house for her when she goes to a party. It just so happens that her father is Tom Stansfield's boss.

Of course, Tom gets himself into numerous "hilarious" situations, which we all have seen dozens of times before. It's somewhat similar to Home Alone, in the way that Tom gets unexpected visits from a dozen uninvited guests that stir up some "fun" situations.

I found myself extremely annoyed at Ashton Kutchers character. Because he was never developed, and all he ever did was getting yelled at by different people, and never has the courage to stand up for himself. Instead he just utters a couple of lines and accepts what's happening to him. This kind of cheap character development is extremely annoying. In the end scene he just "pops" up and suddenly he has developed and is brave enough to stand up for himself (how this happens, we never know).

The jokes are old, the movie is short, the plot is weak, the actors are crap, everything about this film is below par. Add to that that this so called "comedy" actually makes you depressed! That, if anything, warrants a "Extremely Bad Comedy" stamp.

I give it a 3/10. We've seen it ALL before. Absolutely nothing new. And nothing funny...

I'm not a big Kurcher fan, but I was mildly surprised at how funny this actually was. The events were not stop, and his reactions to the whole mess actually seemed real. I've seen him on That 70's Show for years, and thought that this was the extent of his acting prowess. I've also heard that he did a very good job on the Butterfly Effect, but I've yet to see that.

I did like the chemistry between Ashton and Tara Reid. But then again, it's Tara Reid!! How can you NOT have chemistry with her, right?

Overall, I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, and laughed out loud in numerous places. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to spend a mindless 90 minutes getting away from it all. Enjoy.

Tom thinks he has been asked out by the sexy daughter of his manic yet powerful boss but when he arrives at her house he finds that he has actually been asked to house-sit while she parties. His boss Jack Taylor leaves him instructions, very strict instructions and all Tom hopes to do is get through the evening without doing anything negative at all. However it is not just the obvious things that go wrong for Tom, but things that would seem unlikely and absurd to any normal person.

I watch hundreds of films a year covering all sorts of genres, countries and periods. I do not say this as a boast (really, is this anything to be proud of?) but rather to highlight what I mean when I get to my next sentence. I rarely turn a film off or walk out before the end. Rarely, in fact I can only think of one or two where I wrote a review based on part of the film. I don't always do this because I think it will get better but rather because I have a touch of the compulsive behaviour about me and I just prefer to watch the whole thing so I can give my opinion in an informed manner.

So, with this film please feel free to ignore my views on the basis that I switched off at the 60 minute mark, unwilling and unable to stand the film for any of the remaining thirty minutes. I found the 60 minutes that I enduring to be incredibly lazy and contrived with not even a single laugh to cover for it. The entire (from my point of view) film was based around Tom house-sitting due to a misunderstanding whereby he thought he would actually have been dating Lisa Taylor, the character who is the title's daughter of the title's boss. If you have not seen the film you may be shocked to learn that this house-sitting period is not event free, in fact it is pretty much a case of one thing going wrong after another, whether it is a drug deal, a cheating boyfriend, a sexy girl with a great body, a missing owl or some mice getting loose. Be sure – if it can go wrong it does.

Sadly what this "craziness" does not produce is a single laugh or even a single moment where I believed the story was written by a human as opposed to a machine, no, scratch that – a committee of machines. It isn't really predictable, because who predicted a criminal trying to recover drugs as part of the story, it is just that nothing that happens has any wit, humour or imagination about it. I tired of it quickly and literally the best thing I can say about it was that I managed about an hour before bailing out. The cast are rubbish but in fairness it is the material that leaves them out on their own. Kutcher is poor and, to provide a frame of reference – is poor by his own standards. I often thought he was asleep. Aside from a bit of a sexy dance and the fact that short blonde women are lovely, Reid does nothing. The rest of the cast features faces such as Thompson, Tambor, Madsen and others but none are any good. Electra has a great body but that alone accounts for a few minutes of the sixty I sat through.

Overall then, a pointlessly bland film. There wasn't anything that struck me as being "terrible" but rather it was just 100% bland and uninteresting – which I almost think is worse than being bad. You can understand if people are not capable of doing something but seeing everyone putting in so little effort is that bit more insulting. Perhaps it turned into Citizen Kane in the final thirty minutes but I'll never know because the two-thirds I saw was so banal and pointless that I thought switching it off was the only safe option I had.

Tom Stansfield (Ashton Kutcher) works in a publisher and has a very tough boss, Jack Taylor (Terence Stamp). He aims to have the chance to work in the Creation Department of the company. Tom is `Mr. Nice Guy', never being upset and helping his colleagues, and has a crush on Lisa Taylor (Tara Reid), the daughter of Jack. When Jack has to travel to Singapore, Lisa is in charge to housesit her father's house. However, she has a party in the evening and invites Tom to go to her place. Tom misunderstands the invitation of Lisa, thinking it was for a date with her, but when he arrives at the house, Jack is waiting for him with lots of recommendations and procedures to be followed. Jack has obsession for a neat house and his pride and joy is an owl. I believe it is no spoiler to say the everything goes wrong with Tom along the night, with the owl escaping and the most weird visitors arriving in and destroying the house. Although being very silly and full of clichés, sort of `Risky Business' and `Meet the Parents' together, this movie is also very funny. Using lots of scatological and black humor, it is almost impossible not laughing in many situations. Forgettable, but I liked it. Further, the DVD is full of extras. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): `A Filha do Chefe' (`The Boss's Daughter')

Man. About 6 or 7 completely hilarious scenes make this movie worthy of much more praise than a lot of contemporary comedies out there. How can you not like the Michael Madsen/Ashton Kutcher showdown in the living room? "PUT THE GUN DOWN...OR I WILL BLOW YOUR ASS TO F%&K-TOWN!!!" I fell out of my chair man. I just fell out of it. Zucker's still got it, for the most part. ***