She’s a cartoon of a female boss that suggests, once again, that the men running the movie industry are seriously not down with ladies having a say.'Beauty and the Beast' Box Office: 5 Biggest Records Brokenįor one studio to reference another studio’s movie so directly is unconventional, to say the least.īut DreamWorks Animation knew Beauty and the Beast was going to be big, so it came up with the idea to ride Beauty‘s coattails months ago and animate the specially designed trailer.ĭWA, the company that Jeffrey Katzenberg sold last year to NBCUniversal, wasn’t wrong in its hunch. (I wish!) Claire enters breasts first with an ugly dye job, ridiculously tottering heels and evil schemes, twirling a golf club (the better to totter threateningly) and trailed by a toadyish assistant (Karan Soni).

The story wobbles into existence when Mia and Mel sell a stake in their struggling artisanal makeup company to Claire Luna (Salma Hayek), a mercenary beauty titan whose company seems to be located in a vast mall peopled by zombies. They brush their teeth in side-by-side sinks, drive to work in a beater, puff-puff-pass and enjoy the occasional hookups, though never, ahem, with each other. Once he exits it’s back to grim business in a story about two longtime besties, Mia and Mel - the unpersuasively matched Tiffany Haddish and Rose Byrne - who live, work and party as one. Too bad that there’s nothing human or funny about “Like a Boss,” and little that seems written (rather than desperately spitballed) although at least Billy Porter gets a few minutes to show that he can snap even a dud briefly to life. The director Miguel Arteta made his name with indie movies like “Star Maps” and has fared well with more mainstream fare like the affable comedy “Cedar Rapids.” But he needs a solid narrative frame that can support his quiet strengths, notably the ability to make a roomful of actors feel as real as your friends. The signs were as loud as klaxon horns, warning us that “Like a Boss” would be a stinker: the January release date, the shoddy poster, the dubious conceit (the beauty business is, uh, ugly).

Beauty and the boss movie