My Boss' Daughter
Promotional film poster
Directed byDavid Zucker
Written byDavid Dorfman
Produced byGil Netter
John Jacobs
StarringAshton Kutcher
Tara Reid
Jeffrey Tambor
Andy Richter
Terence Stamp
Molly Shannon
CinematographyMartin McGrath
Edited byPatrick Lussier
Sam Craven
Music byTeddy Castellucci
Production
companies
Gil Netter Productions
John Jacobs Productions
Distributed byDimension Films
Miramax Films[1]
Release date
  • August 22, 2003 (2003-08-22)
Running time
86 minutes
90 minutes (R-rated version)
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$14 million[2]
Box office$18.2 million[2]

My Boss's Daughter is a 2003 American comedy film directed by David Zucker. It stars Ashton Kutcher, Tara Reid and Terence Stamp. The film revolves around a man housesitting for his boss and getting into various hijinks with the people who come over to his place. My Boss's Daughter received overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics and was a box office flop, grossing $18 million worldwide against a production budget of $14 million (not including advertising and distribution costs).

It was Charlotte Zucker's final film role before her death on September 5, 2007.

Plot

Tom Stansfield is a researcher at a publishing company in Chicago who works under the tyrannical Jack Taylor. Tom has a crush on his boss' daughter, Lisa, who is completely controlled by her overprotective father.

Lisa reveals to Tom that her father is making her house-sit the same night as a party she wants to attend, so he convinces her to stand up to her father and attend the party anyway. Lisa asks him to come to their house that night, leading Tom to think that she has invited him to the party; in reality, she just wants him to fill in for her - he reluctantly agrees.

A comedy of errors ensues, including the return of Lisa's older brother Red, on the run from drug dealers. He dumps drugs into the toilet, and instead returns a bag of flour to the drug dealer.

One of Tom's tasks is to guard their owl, O-J, which lives in an open cage (it has not been able to fly due to a deep depression, from the loss of a prior mate). When the bird drinks from the toilet polluted with drugs, it flies away. Jack's ex-secretary Audrey goes to the house to try to earn her job back. After fighting with her boyfriend, she stays over at the house.

Lisa returns home after finding out that her boyfriend Hans is cheating on her. Tom hides everything that happened and she spends some time with him thinking he is gay. He clarifies to her that he's actually straight and she starts to like him. Audrey's friend thinks she has breast cancer and asks Tom to feel her breasts. Lisa walks in on them and is disgusted.

T.J., the drug dealer, discovers the 'drugs' he collected earlier was actually flour, so he threatens to kill Tom if he doesn't return his money. T.J. tries to open a safe and steal the money. However, Tom gives him sleeping pills mixed with alcohol which sends him into a coma.

As they think T.J. is dead, Audrey and her friends bury him. Later, T.J. escapes from the grave and threatens to kill Lisa. With Red's help, Tom rescues Lisa and she falls in love with him. He then goes to get her father, but on the way back the owl gets into the car making Tom lose control of the car and crash into the house. They find police officers in the house looking for T.J., who ends up getting arrested.

Jack is enraged by the damages done to the house and throws Tom out. The next day, he hears his son explaining to Lisa how she should stand up to their father and go back to Tom. Jack realizes his mistakes and gives Tom a promotion.

Cast

Production

In December 2000, it was announced Dimension Films had acquired David S. Dorfman's spec script The Guest two years after it was originally acquired by New Line Cinema.[3]

Release

The movie was released by Dimension Films on August 22, 2003, opening at #10 at the U.S. Box office and grossed $4,855,798 on its opening weekend. It was released domestically in 2,206 theaters grossing $15,550,605 in the United States.[2] The film was also released in foreign theaters, grossing a further $2,640,400 with its highest sales of $691,999 in Russia and its lowest sales in the Czech Republic, for a total of $18,191,005 worldwide.[4]

Reception

My Boss's Daughter garnered overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics. It received an 8% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 74 reviews, with an average score of 2.7/10. The site's consensus states: "Offensive, incoherent, and ineptly acted and directed."[5] Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 top reviews from mainstream critics, the film has an average score of 15, based on 19 reviews, indicating "overwhelming dislike".[6]

Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club criticized Zucker's comedic timing of his stock-in-trade non-sequiturs and Kutcher's "sleepwalking" performance for failing to keep the rest of the cast grounded, calling it "an abysmal screwball comedy that relies heavily on idiocy from both sides of the screen."[7] Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times called it a "muddled comedy of confusion" that delivers tasteless and outdated Farrelly brothers-style humor.[8] Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwarzbaum gave the film an overall "F" grade. She criticized the "manic sloppiness" of the jokes from the supporting ensemble and Zucker's direction for feeling like "a substitute teacher soldiering through a day's work for a day's pay at a decertified school."[9] Robert Koehler of Variety felt that Zucker broke a cardinal rule of making comedy look like a lot of work by misusing the comedic talents of his cast but concluded that: "Nonetheless, the movie looks and sounds reasonably good, particularly with Andrew Laws' crucial and shiny production design."[10]

The film received three nominations at the 24th Golden Raspberry Awards including Worst Actor for Ashton Kutcher (also for Cheaper by the Dozen and Just Married), Worst Supporting Actress for Tara Reid and Worst Screen Couple for both Kutcher and Reid (also for Just Married with Brittany Murphy), but lost to Ben Affleck (Daredevil, Gigli and Paycheck), Demi Moore (Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle) and both Affleck and Jennifer Lopez (Gigli) respectively.[11][12]

References

  1. ↑ "My Boss's Daughter (2003) - Financial Information". The Numbers. Retrieved May 20, 2021.
  2. 1 2 3 "My Boss's Daughter (2003)". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Retrieved June 16, 2009.
  3. ↑ "Dimension brings spec laffer 'Guest' home". Variety. Retrieved November 16, 2023.
  4. ↑ "My Boss's Daughter (2003): International Box Office Results". Box Office Mojo. IMDb. Retrieved June 16, 2009.
  5. ↑ "My Boss's Daughter (2003)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. Archived from the original on October 24, 2020. Retrieved June 16, 2009.
  6. ↑ "My Boss's Daughter Reviews". Metacritic. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on November 17, 2020. Retrieved January 2, 2021.
  7. ↑ Tobias, Scott (August 26, 2003). "My Boss's Daughter". The A.V. Club. The Onion. Archived from the original on June 15, 2020. Retrieved June 15, 2020.
  8. ↑ Mitchell, Elvis (August 23, 2003). "Film Review: House-sitting for the Boss as a High-Risk Love Ploy". The New York Times. Archived from the original on October 8, 2020. Retrieved June 15, 2020.
  9. ↑ Schwarzbaum, Lisa (September 5, 2003). "My Boss's Daughter". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on November 24, 2020. Retrieved June 15, 2020.
  10. ↑ Koehler, Robert (August 24, 2003). "My Boss's Daughter". Variety. Archived from the original on November 4, 2017. Retrieved June 15, 2020.
  11. ↑ Silverman, Stephen M. (January 26, 2004). "J.Lo Heads List of Razzie Nominees". People. Meredith Corporation. Archived from the original on June 22, 2020. Retrieved June 19, 2020.
  12. ↑ Germain, David (March 1, 2004). "'Gigli' voted worst in Raspberry Awards". Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Block Communications. Archived from the original on June 21, 2020. Retrieved June 19, 2020.
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