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McCarthy’s ‘The Boss’ just doesn’t work

“You know, I once made love on a pool table in Hot Coffee, Mississippi, with six members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.”

It’s a funny line. Heck, it sounds like it could have been the title of a Fannie Flagg novel. But in Melissa McCarthy’s “The Boss,” it comes out of nowhere. It’s delivered by a character that serves no purpose. It doesn’t mean anything. And it has nothing to do with whatever passes for a plot.

In other words, it’s the perfect joke for “The Boss.”

 

Want to see McCarthy scream at a former colleague about all of the filthy sex acts his recently deceased wife is surely performing in hell? It’s in there.

Want to see her applying so much self-tanner that Kristen Bell remarks that her “pelvic region is the color of curry”? That’s in there, too.

Want to see her interrupt a troop meeting of a Brownie/Girl Scout hybrid to fling F-bombs and yell about sex acts to the point that one of the sweet-faced little Dandelions asks, “What’s girl-on-girl action?” Really? What’s wrong with you? But, yeah, you’d better believe that’s in there.

Awkward, mean-spirited and more angry than the turn-away line at a Donald Trump rally, “The Boss” feels less like it came from a fully realized script than from a collection of ideas from a sketch-comedy journal mistakenly collated, in no particular order, with several pages of an outline for an ill-advised remake of “Troop Beverly Hills.”

A likely scenario? No. But I simply can’t force myself to believe that the immensely likable McCarthy wrote this — along with her husband, director Ben Falcone, and their fellow Groundlings alum Steve Mallory — on purpose.

In “The Boss,” McCarthy plays over-the-top financial self-help guru Michelle Darnell, the 47th wealthiest woman in America. She’s so rich, Michelle boasts, she paid Destiny’s Child to reunite just so she could break them up again. But when she screws over her chief rival and former lover Ron (Peter Dinklage) — who changed his name to Renault, yet fancies himself some sort of samurai — he rats her out for insider trading.

Emerging from prison to find all of her assets have been seized, Michelle crashes on the couch of her beleaguered former assistant Claire (Bell) and unexpectedly bonds with Claire’s preteen daughter, Rachel (Ella Anderson).

When Michelle realizes how much money Rachel’s Dandelion troop makes selling cookies, she co-opts Claire’s brownie recipe and forms the for-profit Darnell’s Darlings — a militant, Guardian Angels-style troop, complete with red berets and denim vests more appropriate for a biker gang — as her way back to the Fortune 500.

Despite its frequent devastating missteps, “The Boss” manages to get a few things right.

First and foremost, like her turn in last summer’s “Spy,” McCarthy continues to distance herself from the frumpy, sad-sack characters that launched her career.

The supporting cast — including Kathy Bates, “Bridesmaids” co-writer Annie Mumolo, “Veep’s” Timothy Simons, “Saturday Night Live’s” Cecily Strong and “Last Man on Earth’s” Kristen Schaal — is first-rate.

And there’s a genuinely amusing teeth-whitening scene in which Michelle’s mouth is forced open, hauntingly wide, like the result of some demented Snapchat filter. A couple of smaller clever bits, though, mostly get lost among the audience’s hootin’ and hollerin’.

Michelle and Claire spend three or four minutes jostling each others breasts, because, why not?

At one point, the Dandelions and Darlings engage in an epic street fight that surely sounded funnier on paper. It certainly was funnier when Will Ferrell, a producer on “The Boss,” did it in “Anchorman.” But here, it’s so shockingly brutal and forced, involving girls so young, even Deadpool would have broken it up and scolded everyone involved.

Then, even more inappropriately, some treacly, Disney Channel-esque moments are spackled on to fill in for the lack of any real plot.

“The Boss” could survive either of those decisions, but not both.

For all the talent involved, no one but McCarthy is given much to do. Bates is only there to deliver that pool table line. And Dinklage, a near-constant presence in the early going, disappears for a good 45 minutes before returning for an action-packed final act that’s so baffling, it leaves Claire asking, “What is happening?”

You’ll be wondering the same, albeit long before she does.

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com. On Twitter: @life_onthecouch

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