First, a little horrible history: in Seth Gordon’s 2011 comedy Horrible Bosses, working stiffs Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day plot, Strangers On A Train-style, to kill each other’s bosses — played by Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston and Colin Farrell (with a comedy combover), all of them bigger stars than the leads — with a little help from a low-life criminal named Motherfucker Jones (Jamie Foxx). The hapless trio’s best-laid plans go comically awry, largely because none of them ever thinks more than two seconds ahead, but the film was a success, its $210 million worldwide gross virtually guaranteeing the kind of rushed, reductive sequel we’ve come to expect from hit comedies (we’re looking at you, Hangover Part II).
The good news is that Horrible Bosses 2 does at least try harder than the lazy remake-the-first-one-in-a-new-location rule of so many comedy sequels, and brings back most of the things fans of the original liked about it. Familiarity with what are laughingly (and not in a comedy way) called ‘characters’ certainly helps. Nick (Bateman), Kurt (Sudeikis) and Dale (Day) remain largely undeveloped, but their new role as would-be entrepreneurs essentially makes them each other’s horrible bosses, as they struggle to bring their invention, a soap-dispensing shower head called the ‘Shower Buddy’ (or, if Dale has his way, the ‘Shower Daddy’) to market, with the help of Christoph Waltz’s bathroom-appliance mogul and his playboy son (Chris Pine). Original horrible bosses Spacey and Aniston get a couple of scenes each, with Aniston’s sex-mad dentist proving even more toe-curlingly profane this time, which scarcely seems possible.
Incoming director Sean Anders, who gifted us Adam Sandler vehicle That’s My Boy but (in mitigation) also wrote Hot Tub Time Machine, adopts his predecessor’s preference for letting Bateman, Sudeikis and Day improvise most of their dialogue, but keeps a tighter reign on the set-pieces, noticeably larger-scale than in the first film. For all the ante-upping, however, it’s still Jamie Foxx’s Motherfucker Jones who provides the most memorable moments — unless Jennifer Aniston talking dirty does it for you.
