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Laughs elude 'My Boss's Daughter'
Tara Reid and Ashton Kutcher
Courtesy of Dimension Films
Director: David Zucker.
Stars: Ashton Kutcher, Tara Reid.
MPAA rating: PG-13, for crude and sex-related humor, drug content and language.
But that's still 85 minutes too many of painfully unfunny scenes of boy-of-the-moment Ashton Kutcher and acting casualty Tara Reid working their way through chaos to eventually find they were made for each other.
The plot, such as it is, revolves around Kutcher's character, Tom Stansfield, and his crush on Reid's Lisa Taylor. Corporate climbers Lisa and Tom both work for Lisa's nearly psychotic father, Jack Taylor (Terence Stamp). And when Lisa would rather party than house-sit for her father and care for his beloved owl O.J., she asks Tom to take over the duties for her. He arrives at the Taylor mansion, thinking he'll be going to the party with Lisa, but ends up in charge of Jack's spotless, priceless abode.
Hilarity is supposed to ensue.
Instead, a parade of reckless hangers-on shows up, trashing the house for no reason other than it's supposed to be funny. Lisa's brother Jack Taylor II (Andy Richter) arrives and conducts drug deals with threatening thug T.J. (Michael Madsen). O.J. flies out of the house into the neighborhood.
Lisa arrives home early after breaking up with her boyfriend and almost immediately does a striptease for Tom, whom she thinks is gay. Just about the only things anyone in the preview audience laughed at were sporadic instances of physical comedy -- Tom falling down and smashing an antique table, for example. But even if physical comedy is something you thoroughly enjoy in comedy, there isn't much of it here, and it's not well done.
Other jokes hang all their hopes on sex, race and disabilities -- and fall flat for lack of cleverness or just plain tastelessness that seemed to make the audience uncomfortable rather than giggly.
After more than an hour of crazy characters destroying nearly everything in sight, daddy calls and says he's coming home early. Suddenly, everyone has a conscience and decides to clean up the place to save Tom from Jack's wrath.
Then, Tom and Lisa get together, and Jack suddenly turns into a nice guy.
Oh, yeah, Jack's feathered friend O.J. finds his way home.
And everyone's relieved -- the movie's finally over.
