Review of Horrible Bosses 2 (2014) by Jesse O — 04 Mar 2015

You know you have problems when the gag reel is funnier than anything in the actual film itself. It's really sad too because it's obvious that there is great chemistry between Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, and Jason Bateman from the gag reel.

And while the movie certainly captures some of that chemistry on screen, it's not nearly as much as you'd like. I don't remember much of the first movie to be honest, it wasn't great to begin with, but I don't remember Dale and Kurt being as stupid as they were presented in this film and I don't think that was the right way to handle the development of these characters.

Not that they were fully-formed, three-dimensional characters, but still. The sequel only captures some of the initial spark between the leads and it's a damn shame. The film itself, while not great or anything, is well-developed in the sense that it's got a story and an endgame as opposed to just feeling like a series of raunchy skits thrown together without any real rhyme or reason.

It may really be more of the same as you got in the original. The poster on here even makes allusion to that. 'New Crime, Same Tools'. That's, of course, has double meaning since you could take the tools to mean Nick, Kurt, and Dale.

But seeing how similar this is to the first installment, it has one more meaning that they most likely didn't intend. I'm honestly debating whether or not to give this 2 or 2.5 stars. I think 2.

5 would honestly be too close to good, even though it'd still be an average film, but it also implies that it was just missing a little bit for it to have been a good film. And I don't think that, at all, it was definitely missing a lot.

A lot of the ideas, concepts, and characters are revisited from the first movie, so there's that. One of the things I didn't like about the first movie, this I remember clearly, was how there was a disconnect between the improvised lines in the film and the more scripted, story shit.

The improv in that film is great to be honest, it felt organic and it was funny. I wasn't as big into the story, where the cast were really reined in. In this film, while there is some improv, there's not nearly as much as it was in the first movie and that's probably one of the reasons, not the only one, that this is such a big step down.

It's honestly not as funny as it thinks it is. Just because there's a lot of cursing and a lot of things that you don't normally see in a PG-13 comedy, does not make this an edgy or clever film.

I wouldn't even call the first film edgy, and that was vastly superior to this. I will say that there are some honest-to-goodness welcome additions to this "franchise". Chris Pine is great, he's good at these types of roles.

Christoph Waltz can be a very funny man, but he's definitely not used to his fullest capacities in this film. Additionally Jamie Foxx's role is more expanded and he certainly makes the most of it.

Jonathan Banks from Breaking Bad, need I say more? Jennifer Aniston also does a good job as the filthy, sex addicted dentist who makes some horrific sex jokes, in a good way, that you should not let your kids, or mothers, hear.

Kevin Spacey making reprising his role from the first film for two scenes where he verbally berates the guys. You have that and the already talented leads, so why is it that this film didn't come together as well as it probably looked on paper.

There's probably a variety of reasons, not just one. But I think its lack of originality and a weaker script that makes the character look more like idiots than anything else didn't help. Jason Bateman is good as the straight man to Charlie Day's and Jason Sudeikis' immensely stupid characters.

Bateman is really a step above almost anyone else in the world when it comes to playing a straight man. You can call me a "fanboy" but I defy you to find me a better straight man to bounce off of lines from than Jason Bateman.

You will have a ridiculously hard time, if you even come up with one at all. And I mean in the modern era, of course. But Jason Bateman can only do so much. And that's not really fair to Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis, who more than held up their own and their chemistry is undeniable.

But the scripting of their characters was terrible. This isn't even a terrible film to be honest, it has its moments, but it just never develops any real consistency. Peaks and valleys, mostly valleys.

But I would never say that this was a truly terrible film. It isn't very good, but it's watchable at least. And it has a story that you can follow, that's a positive. I think if you thought the first movie was the funniest movie of that year then you'd definitely enjoy this, as it's much of the same.

But that's exactly the problem. It's the law of diminishing returns. Wouldn't say avoid entirely, but you don't really have to watch it. There's much better movies out there, like Dead Snow 2.

Just saying.