White Man’s Burden

JASON BATEMAN (Arrested Development), Jason Sudeikis (SNL, 30 Rock), and Charlie Day (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) are three bumbling, dissatisfied white dudes, trapped by a moribund economy into jobs they hate. Each has a cartoonishly horrible boss—sadistic Kevin Spacey, coked-out Colin Ferrell, sexually aggressive Jennifer Aniston. (Actually, “sexually aggressive” is too mild a term. As the dentist that Charlie Day works for as a hygienist, she squirts water on his crotch and notes that he’s uncircumcised.) All three want to quit, but their lack of options is driven home when they run into a friend from high school who’s using his Yale degree to give blowies in bar bathrooms.

Concluding that they have no other options, the three concoct a plot to off their bosses, enlisting first a hit man they find on the internet (“wet work” doesn’t mean what they think it does), and later a guy they find in a bar—Jamie Foxx, who goes by the brilliantly explained name Motherfucker Jones—to serve as “murder consultant.” R-rated comedy and bumbling criminal hijinks ensue. The movie’s best jokes, though, are not the low-hanging fruit offered by Jennifer Aniston saying “pussy” a lot—they’re in the insult-heavy rapport shared by Bateman, Sudeikis, and Day. The silly, borderline-absurd humor that infuses the three leads’ scenes together offsets some of the more generically raunchy, “Can we be the next Hangover, please?”-type jokes.

Am I compelled by feminism to note that there’s not a single appealing female character in the thing? Yes, I am. Could I extend that critique to apply to Charlie Day’s complaints about how Jennifer Aniston is a “raper”? Yes, I suppose I could, if I hadn’t been laughing at them. These guys are terrified of women, black people, and—based on the frequency of prison rape jokes—gays, but the thing is: They kinda should be. The days of the white man’s unchallenged cultural supremacy are over, and if that anxiety underlies the film, it also provides a reasonable context for many of its jokes—jokes delivered with offbeat intelligence and charm by Bateman, Day, and Sudeikis.