My Boss's Daughter

The latest vehicle for Ashton Kutcher, the hot young TV star (That '70s Show) who specializes in playing dim but lovable hunks, My Boss's Daughter is a fragile farce in which Kutcher stars as Tom Stansfield, a shy, goofy lug who's roped into house-sitting for his absurdly stern boss Jack Taylor (Terence Stamp) under the misapprehension that he's going there for a date with Taylor's lovely daughter Lisa (Tara Reid), over whom he's long swooned from afar. Inevitably, a string of comic catastrophes follows, involving--among others--Taylor's untrustworthy son, a mob hit-man, a recently fired secretary and her bevy of lowlife pals, an irate neighbor, a drugged pet owl and the mice intended as its dinner. Predictably, romance also blossoms between Tom and Lisa. Like Just Married, Kutcher's last film, this is nothing more than a series of slapstick sketches tied together by the thinnest of premises; still, Kutcher's ingratiating presence, Stamp's comic menace, and a few sporadically inventive twists make Airplane!-alumni director David Zucker's My Boss's Daughter less awful than you might expect…but that's not saying much. Not a necessary purchase. [Note: Available in PG-13 (theatrical) or R-rated versions, DVD extras on the “R” rated version “you didn't see in theaters”--that adds a few minutes of light raunch--include five minutes of outtakes, a four-minute behind-the-scenes featurette, six minutes of costar Tara Reid's audition, an Easter egg (a rough-cut three-minute segment), and trailers. Bottom line: a solid extras package for a very so-so film.] (F. Swietek)