anthonygreen93 Lars Von Trier's film, The Boss of It All (2006), is a successfully executed black comedy. The plot of the film revolves around an unemployed actor, Kristoffer, brilliantly played by Jens Albinus. The owner of an IT company, Ravn (Peter Gantzler), has told his employers of a fictitious character who is the 'boss of it all' in order to divert any unpopular decisions made by him. When a potential buyer of his company wants to meet the owner of the company in person, Ravn subsequently hires Kristoffer to act as the boss of Ravn's company. Kristoffer attempts to take on the 'boss of it all' persona in a serious manner, yet he is exposed to the audience as clueless and at times, idiotic. This provides much of the humour throughout the film where Kristoffer is so drawn in by the character, that he and 'the boss of it all' have become one and the same. As the story unfolds, the lies build and gather, one after the other, delving Kristoffer deeper and deeper into the continuous lies put forward by Ravn.Writer-director, Von Trier, makes use of terrific dialogue through his actors. The whole cast gel together well and the way Albinus seamlessly becomes more drawn in by the charade makes for great entertainment. This film demonstrates a great example of how black comedy should be produced. The Coen Brothers surely must have taken some inspiration from Von Trier for their black comedy, Burn After Reading. Both films illustrate how something so stupid and unnecessary, snowballing into something taken seriously, can create such great humour. The dull visuals and chopped up cutting, effectively enhanced the mood of the film, creating a greater sense of reality and allowing the film to not be taken so seriously. The Boss of It All is genuinely hilarious, efficiently shot and well put together black-comedic film.

Roland E. Zwick Ravn (Peter Gantzler) is a Danish entrepreneur who, due to an almost pathological need to be liked by everyone, has trouble effectively managing the employees who work for him. To overcome this deficiency, he devises an elaborate ruse, one that involves hiring an out-of-work actor (Jens Albinus) to pose as a fictitious company president whose job it will be to both bark out the orders and deflect any blowback that might come his way from the disgruntled workers. At first, Kristoffer goes along with the plan, convincing the staff that he is indeed the CEO of the firm and that he actually knows what it is he's talking about when it comes to implementing and enforcing company policy. Yet, slowly, Kristoffer comes to suspect that Ravn may not be quite as pure in heart or benign in his motives as the young actor was initially led to believe. Eventually, Kristoffer has to decide just how far he's willing to go with this charade if carrying it to its completion means backstabbing the very people he's actually come to care about in the short time he's been working there.Like virtually all of Lars Van Trier's work, the highly satirical "The Boss of it All," is an acquired taste, one that demands a degree of patience from the viewer - along with a rather high threshold for pretentiousness - before it can be fully understood and appreciated. And, indeed, the first half of the film makes for rather rough sailing as we attempt to descry, through all the verbal fog and cinematic obscurity, just what it is that Van Trier is trying to accomplish. We know it has something to do with skewering the whole corporate-world-mentality thing, but the extreme verbosity and self-conscious film-making style go a long ways towards muddling the message.But, damned if the whole thing doesn't somehow manage to pull itself together long about the midway point and we cruise safely to our admittedly unexpected destination. Part of the reason for the turnabout is that Van Trier is finally able to crystallize his theme once Kristoffer realizes he has a serious moral decision to make and when it starts becoming unclear which "boss" is really pulling the strings - i.e. who is the puppeteer and who the puppet, who the scenarist and who the actor - in this oddball relationship.I've never been overly fond of Van Trier's self-conscious stylistic hallmarks - jump-cuts, catawampus framing, self-referential, film-within-a-film narration - since they serve mainly to call attention to the filmmaker and to throw us out of the drama he's showing us. Still, there are moments when the dark, tongue-in-cheek humor successfully hits its mark, and Van Trier does a nice job dovetailing his parody of the theater into his satire on business. And the unexpected ending demonstrates that none of us is truly above selling out those we care for if the price is right for doing so.

Michael Kastberg Lars Von Trier is know for making heavy film-projects, which are never very funny. Now, this time around, someone has convinced him to make a comedy. I had high hopes for this movie - Von Trier being a master instructor - and figured he'd be able to do it left handed. However, Trier has never put a lid on his disdain for "mainstream", and seeing this movie, I can only explain the result as Trier loathing to do a mainstream comedy.The editing of the film has the camera cutting for new angles all the time, in a tempo which would make MTV jealous. It is totally unnecessary. Lars also plays with deliberate continuous errors, just to make sure that the viewers is totally aware that he is only watching a movie.The plot of the movie is fairly original, and the movie does have a few moments where it makes you smile, but I can't help but to feel,that Lars Von Trier did his out most to sabotage his own movie. Especially the characters are totally overdone, and what had so much potential, lacks any form of release.Lars even has the lead character stating his mission as director:"could it be, that modern comedy, is about putting the spectator on display?"Lars' final F-you-and-goodbye ends the film - "those, who got what they came for, deserved it" (i.e. Lars wants to _educate_ his audience, not give them what they want).

Niels Buus As a fan of Von Trier's other works, I am trying hard to identify the merits of this movie. But no matter how hard I try, I am left with nothing. I will not refer to this release as a motion picture or a movie. The correct classification for me would be staged footage, because that is what it feels like. A full length recording of Danish actors with no lines and no script, walking around in an office building. There is no chemistry or dynamics between the actors. Everything feels incredibly stiff and uncoordinated. There is no comedy. No delivery. No storyline. No point. I want a ticket refund.Watching the unedited silent surveillance tapes of a gas station counter in Uzbekistan would be at least twice as much fun as watching Direktøren For Det Hele.