Review: ‘Like a Boss’ feels more like a chore – you can’t wait for this movie to be over

“Like a Boss” is the perfect airplane movie – something that won’t distract you terribly much while you work the New York Times crossword puzzle during a long flight periodically looking up at the screen when the 2-year-old in the seat behind you kicks the back of your chair.

Oh well. At least that way you won’t fall asleep. In a warm movie theater with reclining lounge chairs, the risk of drifting off is far greater – which is, quite frankly, shocking considering this is a Tiffany Haddish movie.

With Rose Byrne, the normally hilarious Haddish plays the co-owner of a small, bricks-and-mortar cosmetics shop named, after the childhood best friends, Mel & Mia’s.

You know, the kind of quaint, standalone boutique selling hand-mixed foundation and blush that is ground using a mortar and pestle – the kind of place that doesn’t actually exist except onscreen.

Mel and Mia, $500,000 in debt, are miraculously bailed out by Claire Luna (Salma Hayek), a predatory makeup mogul who immediately – and predictably – begins driving a psychological wedge between the business partners playing Byrne’s Mel (the money-minded one) off against Haddish’s Mia (the creative one) so that Claire can assume a controlling interest in their company.

But the power of female friendship is too great in a movie that keeps hammering that point home between jokes about sex, marijuana and a baby shower cake with a doll’s head emerging from what looks like an anatomically correct 3D model you’d find in an OB/GYN’s office.

During a preview screening, the laughs were few and far between, even counting that cake scene. The roster of otherwise funny supporting actors – Billy Porter, Jennifer Coolidge, Karan Soni, Jimmy O. Yang – does little to leaven this flat loaf, which isn’t just flavorless but half-baked.

Case in point: Mel and Mia’s product that initially draws the attention of Claire, for instance, is a single-use makeup kit call the One Night Stand, which isn’t just a dumb idea, but a wasteful one. As wasteful as the film is of its talent.

As for director Miguel Arteta, a filmmaker who, from his 1997 breakout, “Star Maps,” to 2017’s “Beatriz at Dinner,” has never been afraid to be edgy, even transgressive, it’s a mystery why he would make this film when Hollywood is full of no-name hacks willing to do the job.

True to its workplace-themed title, “Like a Boss” feels like a chore someone was handed. Perhaps oddest of all, Mel & Mia’s company is all about selling makeup that doesn’t hide a woman’s natural beauty.

But “Boss” trowels on the clown white, strenuously reaching for nonexistent yuks instead of trusting in the talent of its likable but ill-used cast.