I liked the first movie well enough. The trailers for the sequel looked amusing. How horrible could it be?
Nick (Jason Bateman), Kurt (Jason Sudeikis), and Dale (Charlie Day), having freed themselves from the oppression that was their horrible bosses, have become entrepreneurs. Fulfilling the American dream of being their own bosses, the three bumbling amigos have invented the ultimate as seen on TV type product – the Shower Buddy. Like a carwash, but for your body.
When a wealthy pair of father son business men (Chris Pine and Christoph Waltz) offer them a deal too good to be true for their product, well, it is too good to be true. Manipulated into losing it all, the worst criminal trio in history turns back to crime to fix their pickle. A simple kidnapping should do the trick. Jennifer Aniston, Kevin Spacey and Jamie Fox reprise their previous roles.
Sure the first movie was dumb, but it was rather innocent (as far as R rated comedies go) fun. I don’t remember it being offensive. The sequel fixes that. Incredibly offensive in every way possible, Horrible Bosses 2 starts out being an assault to your intelligence and proceeds to go down the line. Gay jokes, racist jokes, sex jokes, bodily function jokes, sexist jokes – if you put this film up against a MacFarlane work in bad joke bingo, it would be a tight race. And this film would probably make an innuendo laden joke about that tight race.
The plot, while not inspired, has promise in the genre. Pine is perfect as the frat boy douche type, and who doesn’t like Christoph Waltz? More thought, however, is put into a slick ransom plan that never quite gets pulled off correctly than in making any of the rest of the film enjoyable. Sure the gags force up a laugh now and again, but idiots get old after a while, and the Three Stooges these guys ain’t.
This film is, to use the vernacular, like a big fart. It comes at you loud and offensive. It’s not like you haven’t experienced something like it many times before, but some people are still going to laugh at it, even though there’s nothing actually funny about it. Ok, so I did laugh a few times, but I really shouldn’t have.
My rating: Two out of five hats
Mrs. Hamster says:
“Every joke was about bodily functions/sex, being dumb, or being racist. The only part I laughed at was the blooper reel.”
Trailer:
Horrible Bosses 2 stinks up 3,300 theaters November 26
Film Hamster 