Best friends Mia and Mel have done everything together since they were young. They live together, they work together, they brush their teeth together, and they tell each other everything.
Well, almost everything …
Fearful of hurting her friend’s feelings, Mel has been hiding the fact that the makeup company they own together is nearly half a million dollars in debt. Instead, she passive aggressively tries to get Mia to work harder so they can make more money.
Predictably, this doesn’t work out so well.
That’s when Claire Luna enters the picture. Claire is the CEO of one of the most successful makeup companies in the world, and she wants to buy Mia and Mel’s company. She agrees to give them 51% of their company’s shares, but only if they can maintain their friendship.
Mel is ecstatic. Mia … not so much. She doesn’t trust Claire’s motives. And when the two BFFs start arguing about what’s best for their company, it’s pretty clear why Claire included that little friendship clause.
Claire pits the dynamic duo against each other in the hope that their friendship will fail—a task made easier by the fact that both friends have been secretly harboring resentment towards the other.
Will Mia and Mel be able to overlook each other’s flaws and remember why they love each other? Or will their friendship fail and their company fall into the hands of Claire Luna?
Mel and Mia want their company to build women up. Rather than using their makeup to hide women’s flaws, they use their products to highlight women’s best features and emphasize inner beauty. This dedication to encouraging women, paired with their own strong friendship, ultimately spreads to other women and helps them create a company they can be proud of.
When Mel’s mom abandoned her, Mia’s mom took her in and treated her like her own daughter.
A woman claims to be on her way to church to avoid a guy with whom she had a one-night stand.
A woman wearing a revealing slip undresses her boyfriend in preparation for sex. (We see him in his underwear.) Several women wear dresses with short hemlines and visible cleavage. Women dance suggestively at various points throughout the film. A woman twerks for her shirtless boyfriend.
Several discussions deal with sex, graphically describing different acts. Crude jokes are made about sex; male and female anatomy; STDs; and animals mating. A woman repeatedly emphasizes that she is not a man when a group of friends make jokes about it. Several adult women discuss sex in front of a teenage girl before realizing that they should discourage her from being sexually active.
At a baby shower, women eat and comment on a cake decorated to look like childbirth. Drag queens are seen in the background of a party. A makeup company advertises lipstick with a sexually suggestive slogan paired with videos of women eating cherries.
Mia and Mel’s most successful product is a makeup kit called One Night Stand. A rival makeup company called Get Some is helmed by two womanizing men. They continuously put women down and emphasize the need for women to look “hot” for men’s enjoyment. (Claire supports that company and tells Mia and Mel that they should inspire ugly people to buy themselves into gorgeousness.)
Jokes are made about divorce, homosexuality, lactation and women’s appearances. An app designed to tell women what is wrong with them is mentioned. An effeminate male employee is considered to be one of the “ladies” by his coworkers.
A woman threatens to jump off a balcony but then slips and nearly falls accidentally. Mia and Mel throw things from their purses at security guard and knock him down an escalator. Mia throws her shoes at a man’s groin and at another woman’s breast. Two women are hurt after hitting their chests together. Claire is pushed by another woman and falls flat on her face. Mia smashes a large window with a golf club. Claire destroys a flower vase with a golf club and throws a stapler at a drone. A woman describes a dream she had where her child was killed by mousetraps.
The f-word and s-word are used about 30 times each. (The f-word is preceded by “mother” three times.) “A–” and “b–ch” are heard 15 times each; “h—” and “d–k” are heard 10 times each; and “d–n” and “p—y” are each heard a handful of times as well. God’s name is taken in vain at least 15 times, and a character exclaims “OMG” once.
There are also several crude terms used to describe anatomy and human excrement.
Mia and Mel smoke marijuana throughout the film. They also comment about smoking too much of it and having permanently glazed eyes as a side effect. At one point, the two of them smoke in front of a baby and accidentally drop the joint into the baby’s crib. Rather than immediately correcting their mistake, they take a picture since the angle makes it look like the baby is smoking marijuana.
We hear that Mel’s mom manufactures and uses meth. Mia makes a joke about cocaine. Edible marijuana is mentioned as well.
People have a variety of drinks at bars, parties and restaurants.
The reason Mia and Mel wind up in such a precarious situation stems from Mia’s laziness combined with Mel’s nonconfrontational personality. Being the creative force behind their company, Mia often gives herself breaks from working and procrastinates on large projects until the last minute. This drives Mel crazy; but rather than tell the truth, Mel enables Mia’s actions and talks badly about her behind her back. She also allows Claire to bully her into apologizing for Mia’s actions and sucks up to her in the hope that Claire will continue to sponsor their company.
Claire Luna hates Mel and Mia’s friendship. In addition to pitting the friends against one another, she shoots down all their ideas that promote inner beauty and friendship. She admits that she fired her own best friend in order to become more successful.
Two women argue about who is “meaner” when they need to fire an employee. When they finally confront him, they wind up disrespecting him by making it about themselves.
We hear some jokes that have to do with race.
After a woman eats a ghost pepper that was snuck into her food, she belches and dry heaves. She finally drinks from a carton of milk and spits the milk out onto her friend’s face. We hear a woman pass gas as she sits on the toilet (seen from the chest up). A woman describes her bowel movements after saying she accidentally ate the paper that comes between slices of cheese. Rectal thermometers and “boogers” are mentioned. Someone says she didn’t brush her teeth for three weeks.
Friends are there to build you up. And no matter what, they’re always there for you—even when mean makeup moguls try to bring you down and tear you apart.
While Like a Boss communicates this truth effectively, it only does so by pitting women against each other. Viewers have a front-row seat to hurled insults and some very graphic language. And while there’s no nudity, there’s still enough verbally explicit material here to make your ears bleed.
Like a Boss aims to remind us that inner beauty and strong friendships are what matter most. But its use of foul language, crude humor and sexually permissive characters overpowers that theme, almost making it seem like just another joke.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
