I get complaints from some of you when I go off on irrelevant tangents about the Decline of Culture and the Meaninglessness of Everything that really don’t have anything to do with some very nice, very rich people from Los Angeles who are working as hard as they can to make the same movies over and over again that you may laugh. In recognition of those nice people and our shared admiration of their labor, let’s divide this review into useful and nonuseful portions. Here’s what you need to know: “Horrible Bosses” is a lot funnier in theory than in practice, but it won’t ruin your Saturday night. As the trio of put-upon nitwits who decide to rid the world of their respective employers, Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis have an enjoyable and effortless comic chemistry. They even seem to like each other, and whether or not that’s faked it’s a key element of ensemble comedy. The cast of “The Hangover Part II” seemed massively irritated with each other’s company the entire time, and the bad vibes between Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakis in “Due Date” permeated the entire production with a funky, bad odor, like bong-water and old socks mixed with spoiled sweet-and-sour chicken.

It’s a very good thing that those three guys cutting up, mocking each other and getting into embarrassing scrapes is fun to watch, because the script they’re reading (credited to Michael Markowitz, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein) is miscellaneous nonsense, and implausible even by the standards of who-cares Hollywood absurdity. To me, Bateman is the star here as much as he was opposite Aniston in last summer’s mediocre rom-com “The Switch,” where he totally stole the show. He never overplays even the stupidest comic situation, delivers a deadpan comeback with the best of them, and never compromises his basic likability. He plays Nick, a financial professional who’s way more successful than his buddies but is being sadistically strung along by Dave Harken (Spacey), his manipulative, micro-managing boss.

If Spacey starts out deliciously, in full-on flaming-driven-asshole mode, before Dave dissolves into an unconvincingly dumb cascade of evil, Farrell and Aniston’s horrible bosses never remotely resemble real people. Maybe that’s not a bad thing in itself; it’s not like director Seth Gordon (who made “Four Christmases,” along with episodes of “The Office,” “Parks and Recreation” and “Breaking In”) is pushing toward ruthless realism in this relentlessly sitcommy picture. Farrell plays a cokehead degenerate who’s using the small-time chemical company where Kurt (Sudeikis) works as his personal ATM, and that’s a whole bunch of shtick that never goes anywhere.

Aniston, as you may have heard, plays a leggy dentist with a fetching brunette ‘do and a deep stem-to-stern studio tan who craves a little personal attention from Dale (Day), her nerdy, nervous assistant, and won’t take no for an answer. There are so many things to say about this that I don’t know where to start, but, oh yeah, we’re still supposed to be in the useful portion of the review: Aniston might not seem like an automatic choice for this kind of slutty, man-eater role, but she’s ingratiating, funny and medium-sexy, and seems to enjoy herself far more than she ever has playing an anxious, boring sweetheart in romantic comedies.

That said — and here’s where we cross into nonuseful territory — Aniston’s psycho-bitch DDS character is just one of the countless ways that “Horrible Bosses” flirts with troubling or forbidden subject matter while still reassuring its youngish male target demographic as to their masculine coolness. Of course it’s possible for a female boss to sexually harass a male employee. In fact, I’m sure it has happened — in, like, 0.1 percent of harassment cases — but the perpetrator has rarely (or more likely never) resembled Jennifer Aniston. I hardly need to point out that mainstream filmmakers aren’t going to cast a fat woman or a much older woman or a woman who isn’t conventionally attractive in that role, because it wouldn’t be titillating and it would make them look like sexist creeps. In fact, Aniston’s character in “Horrible Bosses” goes well beyond unethical or inappropriate conduct into felonious sexual assault, but it all stays within the realm of comedy because A) it’s ridiculous and B) she’s hot.

I suppose it’s true that Nick, Kurt and Dale hatch a homicidal plan, only it’s more like they have a bunch of Three Stooges misadventures on the road toward having a plan, which involve Kurt sticking a toothbrush up his butt while the other two accidentally ingest loads of cocaine. They also travel into a scary neighborhood (i.e., one where African-Americans live) and meet a guy with a shaved head, prison tattoos and a pseudo-intellectual goatee whose name is Motherfucker Jones (Jamie Foxx). It’s a throwaway role for Foxx, but he gets to play a racist caricature and subvert the white boys’ instinctive racism at the same time, while delivering life lessons drawn from Hitchcock’s “Strangers on a Train” and the 1999 Ethan Hawke vehicle “Snow Falling on Cedars.” (“I love that movie!” Sudeikis says brightly.)

This tiptoe-dance around racial attitudes is reflected in the film’s attitude about homosexuality, which is to dude comedy as that big-ass iceberg was to the Titanic — disastrous but also irresistible. (I won’t spoil a weird cameo appearance by Ioan Gruffudd, but it’s definitely on topic.) Sudeikis’ character is supposed to be an inveterate lady-killer who bags any chick he wants (which doesn’t seem likely, but never mind), but he catches himself checking out another guy’s butt in a big-box store, and becomes embroiled in a running debate with Bateman’s character about which of them will be more “rape-able” if they end up in prison. This is at least the fifth guy-comedy I’ve seen in the last year to mine the ever-hilarious topic of prison rape for laughs, and in its own screwy, accidental way maybe “Horrible Bosses” is taking on the ambivalent, narcissistic quality of post-metrosexual masculinity. No self-respecting straight guy wants to go to prison and become somebody’s bitch (except for the protagonist of David Mamet’s “Edmond”), but it would be even worse to go to prison and be ignored.

3. Woody win of the day: “Midnight in Paris” has become the highest-grossing Woody Allen film since “Hannah and her Sisters.“

4. “Friday Night” news of the day: “Friday Night Lights’” Jesse Plemons (who played Landry Clarke, or the one who looked like a towheaded Matt Damon) has a real-life band that isn’t terrible! Here are Cowboys and Indians with “Troubled Tracks.” 

5. “Office” perk of the day: It may be too good to be true, but according to sources, James Spader is in talks to join the cast of “The Office” next season.  This was after his amazing turn on the season finale as a potential boss for Dunder-Mifflin. Now he might get to be CEO. Seriously, baller:

3. Celebrity karaoke of the day: Jason Segel, Alison Brie, Emily Blunt and John Krasinski crashed a bachelor party in Ann Arbor, Mich. Insanity and singing ensues.  (Please let this mean Segel is dating “Community’s” Brie!)

4. Former “Deadwood” cast member of the day: Ian McShane, last seen in “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” will be playing a dwarf named Ceasar in Universal’s ” Snow White and Huntsman.” That’s the one with Kristen Stewart as Snowie, and Charlize Theron as the wicked stepmother, not the adventure comedy “Snow White” project with Julia Roberts and Lily Collins.

5. Gay slur of the day: Chris Brown. Wait, really? Didn’t we already have to take Cee Lo to task today for his anti-gay tweet this morning? 

It isn’t the idea of “Bad Teacher” that’s the problem, nor is it the casting. Kasdan and his screenwriters (Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, longtime collaborators and producers on “The Office”) are trying to go beyond Judd Apatow-land into the kind of zero-taboo, anti-p.c., sacred cow-poking comedy epitomized by “Bad Santa” or “I Love You Phillip Morris.” I feel like all these guys have seen “Animal House” one too many times, or 20 too many times, and absorbed only its lessons about absurdity and vulgarity. Believe me, I am not opposed to those things. They have a long and lovely history. But when your storytelling and characterization are this feeble, and your filmmaking this careless, then the contempt for the audience starts to show through the so-called hilarity. Kasdan seems to think that if we get to see Diaz talking about sitting on someone’s face, or rolling all over a soapy car in cut-offs and a halter top, Megan Fox-style, or fondling another woman’s ginormous fake boobs, then nothing else matters. He might be right. (I realize I just sold a ton of tickets to this movie, and I’m definitely not getting a commission.)

I’m not going to say that “Bad Teacher” is sexist because it portrays Diaz’s character as a superficial, slutty gold digger who wants nine grand for new tits and doesn’t care about her job or her students. But I’m not exactly expecting the blogosphere and media feminists who fought so hard on behalf of “Bridesmaids” to rush to the barricades in its defense, either. This movie might be sexist in the sense that, beyond a few teensy Diaz flashes, it never makes Elizabeth seem remotely like a human being, just a collection of pseudo-male raunchy talk and inappropriate outfits and stereotypical attitudes. Given how cruelly Kasdan and the scriptwriters treat the rest of the cast, including Punch and Timberlake and Phyllis Smith as a chubby, uncertain fellow teacher, I think the larger problem is not sexism but lameness and stupidity.

Stupnitsky and Eisenberg’s incoherent plot begins with Elizabeth coming home to her rich fiancé with a particularly foul-mouthed promise of heavy-duty fellatio, only to discover that he’s throwing her out after realizing that she’s an avaricious bitch who forgot his birthday. This sends her back to the English-teacher job she just quit at John Adams Middle School, consistently referred to as “JAMS” by its team-spirit principal (John Michael Higgins). I probably wouldn’t care about this movie’s crypto-right-wing implication that pretty much any patently unqualified moron can get and keep a middle-school teaching job, and that public education is totally bereft of standards or accountability, if it were actually funny. (For uninteresting plot reasons, Elizabeth briefly decides to pay attention to her class, but that part doesn’t make sense either. She does not seem capable of reading or caring about “To Kill a Mockingbird,” let alone discussing it.) “Bad Teacher” just meanders haplessly from one setup to the next, with the cast desperately riffing in quest of a comic payoff that never arrives. Not counting the nervous “oh, that’s supposed to be funny” moments, there might not be more than three or four genuine laughs in the whole thing.

Elizabeth boozes, smokes weed, shows her class repeat viewings of “Stand and Deliver” — yeah, the contrast, ha — and fruitlessly competes with Amy for the attentions of super-substitute Scott Delacorte (Timberlake), whose Porsche, expensive watch and effete mannerisms are meant to suggest family money. She lurches from one criminal scheme to the next, arriving at a thoroughly unearned and unmotivated redemption just when you hope she’ll go away forever. Diaz is usually a likable if unambitious actress, but she works way too hard here, trying to lend cynical depth to an adolescent spank-book fantasy combination of a hot body, a bad attitude and no brain. Then again, everybody else is played as a stretched and strained comic archetype too — this is what happens when the deadpan “Office” formula escapes from its half-hour container — with the solitary exception of Jason Segel as the beefy gym teacher Elizabeth ignores, who comes off as a genial nonentity treading water in a sea of crap. Trust me, that’s an improvement.

Meanwhile, Amy Poehler isn’t the only cast member of “Parks and Recreation” keeping herself in the spotlight. While the comedian is off giving speeches at Harvard, her costar Nick Offerman (who plays her boss and meat-lover Ron Swanson) has been wooing Oprah to come play his first ex-wife next season.  As he told the Huffington Post:

“I think Oprah would be the only, she’s the only person we can think of that might be intimidating to Megan Mullally. It would be so good.”

He then added, “I can assure you if it’s not Oprah, I will quit.”

And while that’s doubtful, Oprah should actually consider it. She did cameo on “30 Rock,” so it’s only fair.

Rounding out the news cycle is Danny Pudi, who plays Abed on “Community.” Anyone who still thinks that show isn’t being taken seriously should check out Variety right now, where “Abed” has been given a column in-character for Emmy season. He’s predicting who will win the awards based solely on his extensive knowledge of television and film (despite never having seen the shows in question), as well as his more savant-like tendencies:

I sort the last four into two groups: a) shows that have won an Emmy, so it seems like they’ll win again, and b) shows that haven’t won yet, so it seems like their turn. Sorting every winner since “I Love Lucy” in 1953:

 B A B B A B A B B AA B B AB B A A B B AA A B A A B B A B B A B AB                              A A B B A A A A B B B B B B A B B A A B

The “ABBA” pattern emerges soon and repeats often, as people’s urge to shake up a system always results in systemic shaking. I totally get it: I once missed a week of school by trying not to touch my chin 7,000 times. The stretches of non-ABBA you see are “cable scares,” like when we just kept giving Emmys to “Frasier” until “Larry Sanders” went away. Think of TV as Rain Man getting through HBO’s smoke alarm by chanting “I like the guy from Cheers.”

The whole article is amazing, and by far my favorite post-finale offering from an NBC comedy actor. Then again, I’m a little biased.