When things start to drag, they throw in some slapstick as though it’ll make things better. This is a lazy scene that goes for the cheap laugh. It delves into a mean spirited tirade where Michelle insults everyone present, only to turn around and fall down a flight of stairs. When Michelle encounters a group of fellow businessmen and pleads with them to give her a job, Falcone stays with the scene past the point of annoyance. There are too many instances where the screenplay puts McCarthy in a position that garners no laughs, stays with it for much too long, and then tosses her into a pratfall in an act of desperation.
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Here’s a situation where a movie tries way too hard to find a punch line to a set up that wasn’t funny to begin with. Her screen presence alone makes the material better than it should be, but she’s weighed down by a story too flimsy to keep up with her. There’s no denying that she is very good at both verbal and physical comedy. Sporting a flaming red hairdo and turtlenecks that ride up just below her bottom lip, McCarthy plays Michelle as a ball of consistent energy. It’s a testament to McCarthy’s skill as a comedienne that she almost makes us forget about all that. Was she a bad kid, or just misunderstood? Is her adult self the result of abandonment, or did she always have this personality? Yet we don’t understand what it is that forced them to bring her back. An opening montage attempts to explain why she grew up not trusting others – involving her younger self being repeatedly returned to the orphanage because her adoptive parents were dissatisfied with her.
It wants to play as an all out farce while injecting heartfelt sentiment, but by doing so sits awkwardly in the middle. Unfortunately, the narrative doesn’t establish the kind of tone it’s going for. McCarthy co-wrote the screenplay with her real life husband Ben Falcone (who also directs). She’s condescending, lewd, and selfish, which makes me wonder: why should we care about this character at all? She’s a bulldozer of obscenity – insulting anyone that offers a differing opinion and isn’t shy about stabbing someone in the back if it means advancing her career. The character of Michelle Darnell is the creation of McCarthy’s during her time in The Groundlings comedy group.
The fact that she leaves jail showing no signs of rehabilitation doesn’t help either. In a time where corrupt business practices has become a major issue in the public consciousness, making your protagonist a greedy CEO is a hard obstacle to overcome. Right away, the film treads a precarious line. After a six-month stint in minimum-security prison, she gets released and has to start from the ground up to make it back to the top of the corporate world. Imagine Martha Stewart, but even more brash. In The Boss (2016), Melissa McCarthy plays a self made business tycoon who sees her empire go down the drain when she’s caught for insider trading.
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