The most exciting event of the past weekend was a series of multinational performances organised by the International Festival of Language & Culture (IFLC). At the festival a number of countries around the world come together to celebrate peace and prosperity amongst each other. The thirteenth of its kind took place in Ethiopia at the same time as it did on the other side of the world – in Indonesia.
The whole thing transpired at the famed Ethiopian National Theatre, the oldest and most exquisite theatre in the country, built by Ethiopia’s last great Emperor. I have always admired the theatre’s timeless interior design, and the astute plays it has produced over the years. Technically speaking, it is a much more polished establishment to screen a movie than, say, the almost derelict Hager Fekir. Nonetheless, the National Theatre does not compare with Matti Cinema’s crispy clean projection screens and state of the art surround sound system. The latter, even after so many movies, has never failed to impress me. I consider myself something of an audiophile.
But audiophile or not, it was a mistake to so close to the stage at the IFLC event. The only speakers in the entire auditorium are situated at the front, which means audiences sitting at the back can hear anything only if the volume is pumped up to a maximum. And it was – which was bad news for anyone sitting in the front seats. Despite such shortcomings and drawbacks, like the overall corny nature of the show and the amateurishly choreographed dance numbers, I still managed to have a wonderful time. That was probably because every single performer and instrumentalist involved in the show exists at the opposite moral spectrum to that the characters in The Boss.
Not so far from the theatre, The Boss was playing in the upscale town of Bole, where the rich and spoiled are known to coalesce. As I was buying my ticket, some textbook romantic comedy cliché was telling her date that she does not get why she has to take Math courses in high school, when all she wants to be when she grows up is a fashion designer. This is the typical Matti Cinema audience – the kind that is pampered, clueless and blissfully materialistic, and will never find out, like the rest of humanity, that they needed to take that Math course seriously. The Boss exists to fuel that kind of ignorance.
The film is about an undeservingly rich protagonist, the kind that we love to see in reality TV shows. She is Michelle Darnell, and she is on her way to the very top, which is to say she has ambitions. But most people confuse ambition for greed, which is what topples Darnell. In a desperate cutthroat white-collar competition with her then lover and now rival, Renault, she crudely commits what is known as insider trading. A prison sentence follows and consequently, she loses her entire estate.
Straight out of prison and desperate, she turns to her middle class ex-assistant Claire, who takes her in. Claire is a single mother who lives in a small New York apartment with a perfect daughter who has not yet hit puberty (which is why she is perfect). She also has an old family recipe for making tasty chocolate cookies, which Darnell discovers can be turned into a profitable business venture. And so Darnell goes on to prove why she was rich in the first place.
At the heart of the film, there is a conspicuous message that the middle class person is a fool. Claire works long hours in a dreary office for miserable pay. She hates her job but keeps at it because she has a daughter and this hampers her from being able to give up her main source of income and take a risk. She also never realises that she owns a treasure in the form of her family recipe. Consequently, she stays relatively destitute.
Enter Darnell, who is loud and sassy, which in the movie seems to be the key to her success. When she becomes homeless and moves in with Claire, she quickly figures out a way to make insane amounts of money. And more importantly, she helps Claire become financially well-off with a job she loves to do. In other words, the rich is presented as the holy saviour to the unimaginative and underprivileged middle class.
So it should not come as a shock if I said that the film is made and scripted by wealthy people. It is a Hollywood film, after all. Darnell is played by America’s sweetheart Melissa McCarthy, who despite my distaste for the film still managed to make me laugh. Her comic timing is insatiable, even when it is obvious what she is going to do or say next (given the film’s transparent plotline). My only problem with her involvement in this film is that she also co-wrote it, with her husband Ben Falcone.
The husband and wife team also brought us the equally insipid Tammy. But that movie was innocuous, while The Boss is immoral. The cocky, overweight and usually unsympathetic Darnell is a female version of Donald Trump and her subordinate Claire, an archetype of the old and disgruntled white working class American. The type Darnell has shunned all her life, but turns to in her time of need.
It must be obvious to McCarthy by now that she is clueless without Paul Feig. He directed her in three movies, Brides Maids, The Heat and Spy – the only good films in which McCarthy has ever starred. Every other film she has made, however funny she might appear to be in it, is less than mundane, maybe except St. Vincent. Feig too has never made a worthwhile movie that does not involve McCarthy, so perhaps they are symbiotic. So, let’s just sit and wait for their much anticipated next collaboration, the Ghostbusters reboot, and hope to God that McCarthy does not squeeze in another movie she has written.
Film Review|by Christian tesfaye – special to fortune
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