“Horrible Bosses” (2011) was a
screwball comedy that found most of its fun in the bumbling attempts
of three basically good-natured guys to do bad-natured things. Their innate goodness and over-reactions to the events they found themselves in was
the source of the comedy. The source of comedy in this basically
unnecessary sequel is much more straightforward. Stupidity.
Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and
Charlie Day return as Nick, Kurt and Dale, who have now given up
their hated careers for entrepreneurship. They have developed a
completely idiotic product called “The Shower Buddy” which
dispenses your shampoo and conditioner directly to the top of your
head at strategic points during your shower. Despite this product's
utter uselessness they receive a career-making order of 100,000 units from an
online company run by Christoph Waltz. Now I love Waltz (except in
the weirder-than-weird “The Zero Theorum”) but he is remarkably
un-funny in this film. Of course, they play him as mean and cruel rather
than stupid, which is where this film tries to get all its
laughs, so perhaps he wasn't meant to be funny.
The business deal goes south when they discover
that the big order was a scheme to get them to leverage themselves to
the hilt so that when the order is canceled and they go bankrupt,
Waltz's company can buy the inventory at auction for pennies on the
dollar and then buy out the patent. That these yahoos never thought
to get a DEPOSIT on the order is mind-boggling. Nobody would be that
stupid in reality.
So in order to save their company, they
decide to kidnap Waltz's son Rex (played by Chris Pine) and ransom him for the value of their outstanding loans. Rex was for
me the best character in the movie, as he was equally stupid but also cunning
and manipulative and pretty much hilarious in his over-the-top mistreatment of
everyone else around him. Pine appears to have had a lot of fun
playing this part, or else he is a much better actor that I ever gave him
credit for – he seems to be literally brimming with mirth the
entire time.
The three leads being who they are, of
course nothing goes to plan. But where in the original it was
comical to see them react to their misfortune, in this one it is
their stupidity that leads to the misfortune. In trying to steal
nitrous oxide from Dale's old boss (Jennifer Aniston) you almost have
to hold your head to keep it from exploding, so ridiculous is their attempt at robbery. This is forgivable though, as
it got Aniston back into the movie.....
Overall, I have to admit there are some
laughs in this film. Quite a few of them in fact. And while I am
only giving it a very moderately lower rating than the original, it
really isn't half as enjoyable. Jason Bateman's comeback continues –
for a guy that was nowhere 10 years ago he is surely in a lot of
films these days, and generally plays as good a “straight man” as
you can find in modern film. But it is a disappointment overall and
what we would have traditionally called “a renter”.
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