The Boss

Melissa McCarthy has proven that she deserves the opportunity to headline big-budget studio comedies. She just needs to take better advantage of those chances before they disappear.

The comedienne recycles her shtick again in The Boss, in which McCarthy seems to be working harder to generate laughs than the script.

McCarthy plays Michelle Darnell, who compares herself to Martha Stewart and means that as a compliment. She was raised as an overweight orphan, and then turned herself into a millionaire CEO selling out arenas with her self-help seminars (although we’re conveniently never told how that happened).

Her fame and fortune disappears quickly, however, when a malevolent adversary (Peter Dinklage) rats her out for insider trading. When she gets out of prison, Michelle is broke and homeless, yet determined to rebuild her empire and not totally willing to come clean about her misdeeds. “White-collar crime doesn’t count,” she explains.

Michelle reaches out to single mom Claire (Kristen Bell), her former assistant whose daughter (Ella Anderson) is active in the Dandelions, a cookie-selling scout troop. Michelle sees an unscrupulous new business venture using the cookie concept with other baked goods, and simultaneously begins to see Claire and her daughter as the family she never had.

The film marks the second unsuccessful collaboration between McCarthy and her husband, director Ben Falcone (Tammy). The pair also co-wrote the screenplay, which emphasizes broad slapstick over clever satire and doesn’t seem to realize that aggressive vulgarity isn’t automatically funny.

Still, The Boss manages some scattered big laughs with a mix of sight gags and one-liners. The rivalry between Michelle and a Dandelion mother (Annie Momolo) provides some highlights. Yet there are more jokes that fall flat, such as a protracted street fight between Michelle’s girls and the Dandelions, and an extended sequence involving her questionable eating habits.

There are opportunities to satirize greedy moguls or the business of girl-scout cookies, but the film remains too detached from reality to earn audience sympathy as it transitions into a predictable redemption story in its final act.

Along the way, McCarthy’s character remains unlikable. Instead of soft and cuddly, she’s boorish and obnoxious, and the film follows suit.

Rated R, 99 minutes.