Like a Boss

Haddish and Byrne know their way around a joke and have crackling comic chemistry, which elevates this movie's throwaway plot and turns the whole enterprise into something worth watching. At times, Like a Boss seems cobbled together out of other (admittedly better) comedies about female friendship: Haddish and Byrne have an unbreakable Romy and Michele-like BFF bond that's set upon by malevolent outside forces, Girls Trip-style, which inevitably results in Bridesmaids-esque hijinks. But while Like a Boss is funny all the way through, it ultimately doesn't reach the heights of those earlier films. It lacks a certain something (sweetness? authenticity?), which can perhaps be blamed on the fact that Like a Boss has an almost all-male writing and directing team, and those three movies were all written, at least in part, by women.

That aside, Haddish, of course, gets all the best lines, and is great at delivering them. It feels like Mia is a riff on Haddish herself: profane, unapologetically sexual, and an enthusiastic pot user. When her much younger boyfriend (who's making Mia breakfast shirtless) says something dumb, Mia assures Mel, "I don't listen, I just watch his velvety lips move and picture them in my nooks and crannies." Jennifer Coolidge, always reliable, gets some great moments, too, but besides Haddish, the real Like a Boss MVP is Billy Porter, who turns an uncomfortable scene in which Mia and Mel fire their longtime employee into a tour de force, holding their gaze furiously as he slowly stalks out of a restaurant, hissing "Witness my tragic moment." All these great performances are set loose in kind of a goofy movie, but audiences will laugh and enjoy themselves, even if the story melts away a few moments after the credits roll.