For the better part of more than two decades now, Scott Adams’ Dilbert has ruled the comic pages with its sarcastic workplace humour. Yet one wonders why there hasn’t been a successful big-screen transition of its basic premise (something all men and women know instinctively) that the institution of work where most people spend their lives, simply put, sucks. Barring Mike Judge’s poorly-received Office Space, which coincidentally shares with this film the cast member of Jennifer Aniston, workplace comedies have been few and far between.

Then the recession arrives, and the workplace goes from hell to limbo. The dilemma of work changes; the point is no longer than work sucks even though it still does, the dilemma of work is that even if it sucks, it’s still the one thing standing between you and being cast out to wander the depths of jobless Hell.

Nick (Jason Bateman), Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) and Dale (Charlie Day) were high school pals who ended up in separate jobs with three rather obnoxious bosses. Nick has Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey), a clammy, deadpan, corporate monster who works Nick’s fingers to the bone. Dale gets Julia Harris (Jennifer Aniston), a sex-crazed nymphomaniac who constantly humiliates him sexually while teasing him with come-hithers at the same time. Kurt gets the obnoxious heir to his chemicals factory (Colin Farrell) after the kindly old boss (Donald Sutherland, who will do children’s parties if you pay him high enough) passes on. So one day at the bar they come up with the idea to kill their bosses. It catches on. Hiring a guy named Jones (Jamie Foxx), whose first name does not warrant publication even in this newsletter, as their “murder consultant”, they embark on a series of crazy schemes to murder each others’ employers.

Considering that anti-heroes offered a false hope that they can get game the system and get away with it is generally a staple of Film Noir, the stage looks truly set for a blacker-than-black comedy shot through with Noir’s dark fatalism. Sadly, Horrible Bosses pretty much throws away the potential for that level of darkness once things get in motion. Our three protagonists are not everymen at all but pretty much dolts, with Nick a non-descript milquetoast, Kurt a randy himbo, and Dale the sort of dimwitted nebbish who plays Angry Birds and watches The Notebook when he’s supposed to be on his reconnaissance mission. On top of that, they experience too many qualms about killing their bosses to even be anti-heroes proper, and their bosses are such caricatures as to be hardly believable even as villains, that the movie just runs out of steam as it approaches its end.

Not that there aren’t laughs to be had, but it would be fair to say that none of the laughs rise above sitcom quality. The villains are equally mixed: Spacey does the usual calm, collected psychopath role that shot him to fame in Seven and Swimming with Sharks and Aniston plays against type as an Alpha Female so over the top, you wonder why she needs to spend time hitting on a short, squeaky-voiced nebbish. Colin Farrell’s terrible combover hairpiece does his acting for him in the role of a dimwitted, quick-tempered Bruce Lee wannabe crackhead.

It doesn’t help also that the film has such unimaginative camerawork and such a hit-and-miss quality to the jokes that you wonder if director Seth Gordon and writers Michael Markowitz, John Francis Daley and Jonathan M Goldstein really have much invested in their characters to begin with. A very convenient plot development that also seems to involve one of the personages acting out of character, also pops up that robs the movie of much of its potential darkness and ambiguity.

In the end, Horrible Bosses is an Oreo comedy: black on the outside, white on the inside.  There is some laughter to be had, but the film won’t follow its dark premise to its logical conclusion, which robs the viewer of the fun in cackling devilishly.