798. Horrible Bosses 2 (2014)

Starring: Jason Sudeikis, Jason Bateman, Charlie Day

Director: Sean Anders

Running Time: 108 mins

Horrible Bosses 2 is an American film and the sequel to Horrible Bosses. Set 3 years after the events of the first film, Nick, Kurt and Dale attempt to set up their own business, however after being crossed by a wealthy executive, they devise a harebrained kidnapping scheme.

This is a long way off of the first film, which I really enjoyed (some say a bit too much). It still retains some laughs, but the simplicity of the plot is switched for a totally convoluted and boring story here, the characters are a whole lot less convincing, the jokes are extremely repetitive, and it’s just nowhere near as entertaining to watch this time around.

The film starts with Nick, Kurt and Dale trying to start their own business, where they manufacture some sort of shower contraption called a ‘Shower Buddy’. From the beginning, this was hugely irritating for me, because it’s a huge change from the characters they were in the first film. There, they just wanted to kill their bosses and then deal with it all later, however they never seemed like the sort of people who had the ingenuity or interest to become entrepreneurs, which made them a whole lot less convincing in this film.

Meanwhile, there are cameo-ish appearances from all of your favourite horrible bosses from the first film. Kevin Spacey, who I absolutely loved in the previous movie, makes very occasional and repeatedly unfunny appearances throughout the plot, which is a real shame, whilst Jennifer Aniston, who was hilarious in the first film, is also incredibly repetitive and a lot more repulsive in this film than she was crazy in the first one.

There’s also two new characters, a billionaire, played surprisingly boringly by Christoph Waltz, and his son, played by Chris Pine. The son is a little bit of a madman, and after seeing his performance in Stretch, this really does show that Chris Pine is actually very good at playing a nutter, because he was probably the funniest and craziest part of this whole film.

Then there’s the story, which was the biggest disappointment of all. The first film was simple and crazy: three normal guys wanting to get revenge on their bosses by killing them; and that’s why I loved it so much. Here, on the other hand, it’s about three budding entrepreneurs who want to kidnap a wealthy man in order to receive ransom money so that they can do a deal with a billionaire which will start off their tiny business only to inevitably go back down the drain… So, you can see that it’s nowhere near as simple or fun, and with the combination of much poorer comedy, the story becomes a whole lot more boring and unimpressive, so that’s why this gets a 6.4 from me.