My Boss's Daughter: Movie & DVD Review (2003)

(Originally published 2003)

The debate between what constitutes a good movie and a bad movie will forever rage on, as any film critic with a published e-mail address can attest. Still, can we agree that it's a bit dispiriting to see an actor of Terence Stamp's caliber hanging from a rooftop while beer bottles, rodents, trash and feces slide from the shingles into his mouth?

That's one of the final scenes in "My Boss's Daughter," a numbing stinker from David Zucker that finds the director of "Airplane," "Ruthless People" and the "Naked Gun" series slumming with a burned-out Farrelly brothers sensibility crossed with a "Risky Business" twist.

Based on David Dorfman’s script, Zucker's nervous, crude comedy has none of the playful, raucous wit for which he’s known. His movie has no shape, no snap, no life, few laughs; it's just there, taking up space while turning audience’s brains into hash and good actors like Stamp into public urinals (in one scene, quite literally).

For Stamp, the good news is that he doesn't have to walk this dog alone. In the lead is the affable Ashton Kutcher, star of "That '70s Show" and MTV's "Punk'd," as Tom Stansfield, a research assistant for a Chicago-based publishing house run by Jack Taylor (Stamp), a cruel man with mean eyes whose daughter, Lisa (Tara Reid), is high atop Tom's to-do list

After a series of misunderstandings, Tom finds himself house sitting for father and daughter, a gig that demands he protect Jack's multi-million-dollar estate at all costs while also caring for the man's pet owl, O.J.

Naturally, the inevitable O.J. jokes abound, as do the ongoing misunderstandings, most of which end in some sort of toilet humor with none of the situations going anywhere. Molly Shannon, Michael Madsen, Tyler Labine and Andy Richter co-star as interlopers brought in to pull a Queen Latifah and bring down the house.

The corruption of movies into TV sitcoms began decades ago, but "My Boss's Daughter" reminds you how corrosive and grueling an experience it can be to endure. Kutcher will come away bruised by this experience, but not destroyed by it. He’s too young and popular for this sort of thing to stick, and his current tabloid romance with Demi Moore is creating the sort of sensation that tends to overshadow this kind of debauchery.

Stamp won’t be so lucky. Few movie stars are immune to making a quick buck at the box office, but the stink of lining one's pockets with gold always seems to last longer than the money itself. Watching "Daughter," you have to wonder why he agreed to do it. Is the humiliation and potential career damage worth a quick million in the bank?

Apparently so.

Grade: BOMB