Horrible Bosses 2 (2014)

Movie Info

Hey guys, we’re being upstaged by the “guest-star”

Nick Hendricks (Jason Bateman), Kurt Buckman (Jason Sudeikis), and Dale Arbus (Charlie Day) are back!  When their new invention called the Shower Buddy (or is it Shower Daddy?) is stolen by Burt Hanson (Christoph Waltz) and his son Rex (Chris Pine) after financially ruining them, Nick, Kurt, and Dale plot revenge.  Unfortunately, Rex is crazy and wants in on his own kidnapping …leading to a ransom that will cost Nick, Kurt, and Dale everything.

Directed by Sean Anders, Horrible Bosses 2 is the black-comedy sequel to the 2011 blockbuster film.  The comedy was successful but received much less favorable rating than its predecessor.

Kevin Spacey gives it two middle fingers up!

I was ok with Horrible Bosses.  It wasn’t the best comedy I had seen, but I had rather low expectations, and it turned out not to be the worst comedy I had seen.  With positive reviews for the first film and a rather blasé reaction to it, I worried about seeing Horrible Bosses 2 which had less favorable reviews.  Rather than completely hating this movie, I felt it was just more of the same.

The story for the movie does have its moments.  Heist movies can be fun, but also tedious as one thing after another goes wrong.  I like that we get to see the perfect heist and then watch it fall apart because it wouldn’t have been a believable plot if you hadn’t seen how the plan was supposed to go.  The movie however does try to shoehorn the original cast into the story, and Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Aniston, and Kevin Spacey feel like they are forced into the story.

What was harder: Fitting into the outfit or fitting the character into the movie?

The cast is the only thing really going for the movie.  The three leads work together well as a rather modern take on the Three Stooges.  Jason Bateman takes the exasperated Moe role, Jason Sudeikis is Larry, and Charlie Day is Curly.  It works for the film and all the films have great supporting characters to play off of in the likes of the underused Christoph Waltz who has proved he can be much more evil and psychotic than in this film, Jennifer Aniston who is still trying to break her good girl Rachel role, and Jamie Foxx gets some laughs as the cat loving Motherfucker Jones.  The movie does benefit from Star Trek vet Chris Pines as the psychotic Max who is pretty evil, but as the characters say still likable.

I want a movie starring the scary fantasy skeleton costumes

Overall, I don’t know that the movie is as bad as it was made out to be, but it still on the fringe of being good like the previous film.  The movie is a bit of a hodgepodge of 9 to 5 (like the first film) combined with Ruthless People.  I like dark comedies, but it feels like the movie could go even darker and benefit from it.  That doesn’t mean gross-out jokes (which it sometimes resorts to), but it does mean edgier comedy that leaves the audience uncomfortable laughing at.  With a moderate success but a low budget, I don’t know if we’ll see Horrible Bosses 3 or not.  The only thing that I think it could do is make the main characters the horrible bosses and have the roles reversed on them…that I might watch.

Related Links:

Horrible Bosses (2011)