Avis des critiques

Delighting in hitting its barn door-sized targets, “The Good Boss” works best when writer/director Fernando León de Aranoa uses a subtler hand to dismantle the illusion of solidarity between employer and employee. When the film shifts to broader comedy... the script’s satiric punch loses some of its sting.

The Good Boss is a clever film rather than a really trenchant one, the sly farce just a little too calculated, the pace at moments sluggish. But the film has a definite elegance... [and] Bardem is one of the few actors who could really carry off this role.

In two hours, The Good Boss crams in enough episodes for a series... [The film] is designed to be an acting tour de force for Bardem, and it's certainly that... [His is] a memorably dominating performance.

It’s a decently constructed piece of fluff that is way too soft to exert any real lasting impact. Yet the reason to see it is for Bardem’s masterful, completely committed lead turn.

An impressively slick and slimy performance from Javier Bardem is the standout selling point for this serviceable if (perhaps appropriately?) workaday satire... Bardem dominates the screen in a role that exploits his ability to combine smarmy charm with reptilian repugnance.

It’s smartly shot and nicely paced by the writer-director Fernando Leon de Aranoa, and occasionally taps into some zany Coen brothers energy... Yet in the grand pantheon of terrible movie bosses, from Gordon Gekko to Miranda Priestly, Julio is simply too bland to matter... The result is a perfectly acceptable wry-smile movie. Nothing more.

The Good Boss rattles along watchably enough: though perhaps it would have been better as a four-part TV drama... But Bardem’s natural style and charisma keeps the film in place.

A motley crew of characters, each with their own vignettes that Blanco meddles in, makes The Good Boss feel like The Office, a delicious ensemble satire, but Bardem’s inherent magnetism veers it into Shakespearean/Succession territory. For all the dry wit, The Good Boss is ultimately a portrait of a megalomaniac, and a satisfying parable of the inherent rottenness of capitalist greed.

Much of the comedy here is firmly of the mainstream sort, including farcical encounters and running gags... [but] León de Aranoa does have one or two sucker punches up his sleeve that remind you he's not playing nicely after all. It's a shame he doesn't let more of the darkness in, although the overall package, like Blanco, is never less than breezy and slick.

as played with an inspired fusion of mundanity and menace by Bardem — his natural earthy charisma tamped down beneath shapeless suiting, wire-rimmed glasses and a lank, frosted swadge of executive hair — [Blanco is] curiously riveting, and the best reason this amusing but gazpacho-temperature satire has for being.

Bardem soars in [the film's] settings: soothing, dissembling and manipulative. As a modern Machiavelli with an MBA in management, he is riveting.

This two-hour comedy relies on common comedy tropes such awkward sexual encounters, untimely serendipities and fragile masculinity to excellent results, while also depicting social classes in conflict and making subtle political statements. A Spanish screwball comedy fitting for the 21st century.