Horrible Bosses 2 (2014) review

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again; 2011, while not really the best year when it came to movies, did have both some surprises and some surprise hits. One that fell into the latter group was the comedy ‘Horrible Bosses’, in which Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis, and Charlie Day starred as a trio of friends who conspired to kill their titular ‘Horrible Bosses’ when they found that they were unsatisfied with their current job statuses. I didn’t see it when it first came out but I did end up getting it on Blu-Ray and I watched it before seeing the sequel. Overall I can’t say that it’s one of my all-time favorite comedies but it did have quite a good amount of laughs, which mostly stemmed from the fact that the three main characters were, to put it bluntly, a bunch of idiots. Korey Coleman from DoubleToasted.com (formerly Spill.com) said it best when he noted that this is pretty much the closest that we might ever get to a modern-day Three Stooges movie and sure enough that’s exactly what the first ‘Horrible Bosses’ was. So now we have ‘Horrible Bosses 2’, with the majority of the main cast from the first movie (save for one, whose identity I won’t spoil for those who haven’t seen the first film) returning albeit now under a different director, with Sean Anders taking over for Seth Gordon. And overall, while I can’t say that ‘Horrible Bosses 2’ is the absolute best comedy of this year, or that it’s even better than the first film, I will say that it does have a decent amount of laughs primarily thanks to the camaraderie of its cast.

After spending most of their careers working for terrible bosses, best friends Nick Hendricks (Jason Bateman), Dale Arbus (Charlie Day), and Kurt Buckman (Jason Sudekis) decide to start up their own business so that they can be their own bosses. They come up with an idea for a car wash inspired shower product which they call the ‘Shower Buddy’ and they agree to a manufacturing deal with investor Burt Hanson (Christoph Waltz). However, after the trio take out a business loan in order to produce the 500,000 units that were asked for in the deal, Burt suddenly backs out of their deal as he plans to take all of their inventory and sell it himself. Now facing a huge debt as a result of their loan, the trio look to find a way to save their company. After what they went through in the first movie trying to kill their old bosses, they decide to resort to kidnapping as they plan to kidnap Burt’s son Rex (Chris Pine) and hold him hostage for ransom. But after their first kidnap attempt, they suddenly find that Rex is very eager to help them get revenge on his dad because of the strained relationship they’ve currently been having. Though hesitant at first, they accept his help as they all plan to get back at Burt but as in the last movie, things really don’t end up going as well as they plan.

Now ‘Horrible Bosses 2’ does commit the same mistake that most comedy sequels do; instead of trying something different, it’s mostly just the same general beats from the first movie (what I’m guessing studios like to call what they think is a ‘tried and tested’ formula). There are some very, very minor differences like how in this one the trio is doing a kidnapping instead of murdering their adversaries and how one of their adversaries ends up helping them, but for the most part the film maintains a fairly similar structure to the first film in terms of its plot. Still, despite that, the film still has a fairly decent amount of laughs. I didn’t really think there was any major laugh-out-loud moment like there was in the first film (like when Dale tries to save one of the trio’s bosses when he is affected by a peanut allergy) but overall this sequel still had its fair share of laughs. Like the first film, it is due to the pure stupidity of the main characters of Nick, Kurt, and Dale. I mean when you really get down to it, these three just have no idea what they’re doing. And that’s really what makes these films so funny is how we see them constantly screw up in their plans, from forgetting to do something because they get distracted to revealing something that they didn’t want anyone else to know. As noted earlier, they’re the modern-day ‘Three Stooges’.

Once again, this film primarily succeeds thanks to the great camaraderie between the three leads; Bateman, Day, and Sudekis. They do work off each other incredibly well even if when these three characters are together you know they’re going to do a lot of really, really dumb things and also sometimes they ramble over each other to the point where sometimes you have no idea what they’re saying. Jennifer Aniston and Kevin Spacey also reprise their roles as Dale and Nick’s former bosses Dr. Julia Harris and Dave Harken, respectively, as does Jamie Foxx as Motherf***er Jones and they all have their own memorable moments in their fairly brief bits of screen-time. Of the new cast additions, the biggest standout is easily Chris Pine. Pine showcases some excellent comedic chops (which I do think we saw bits and pieces of from his work in the recent ‘Star Trek’ films) and he also works well off of the three leads just as much as they do with each other. Still, some of the new additions to the cast unfortunately are wasted in this, namely Christoph Waltz and Jonathan Banks (AKA Breaking Bad’s Mike Ehrmantraut), the latter of whom plays the detective working the ‘case’ of Rex’s kidnapping. That’s basically due to the fact that because the film focuses so much on the lead trio and Pine, Waltz and Banks don’t get much to work with here.

Like with many comedy sequels, ‘Horrible Bosses 2’ doesn’t really do much new when compared to the first film. It’s basically the same plot just with a slight few differences. Still, as far as the comedy sequels that do copy the same plot of their predecessors go, this is one of the better ones of that group even if it isn’t self-aware of this fact like ‘22 Jump Street’ was earlier this year. No, it’s not the funniest film of the year and I can’t even say it’s better than the first film. Still, it does manage to get by thanks to the whole scenario of the stupid actions committed by the three lead characters and the excellent camaraderie amongst the three main leads in Jason Bateman, Jason Sudekis, and Charlie Day. Ultimately, I feel that whether or not you do like this movie may depend on what you thought of the first film, seeing how this is basically the same general movie. It was a solid hit commercially but I am aware of some criticizing it for some mean-spirited (racist, homophobic, etc.) jokes and yeah there are definitely some jokes of that nature in both of these movies. Despite this, I did like the first ‘Horrible Bosses’ and ultimately I did like ‘Horrible Bosses 2’ even if this film does rehash a lot of bits from the first film. So if you did like the first film, I bet you’ll like this one too.

Rating: 3.5/5