How do you stop nice people from doing stupid things? Really, how? Because even in a comedy, eventually you’re gonna want your heroes to act smart, you know, once? Is once asking too much? How about a half? Can we have half a time of smart? A quarter? *sigh* Oh well.
Watching Horrible Bosses 2 is a bit like watching a Roadrunner/Wile E. Coyote marathon. Yes, it’s entertaining, but at some point, you really wish the coyote would learn from his mistakes. Nick (Jason Bateman), Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) and Dale (Charlie Day), fresh from their “victory” in the original Horrible Bosses, have taken the threats, arrests, life-and-death playtime and learned exactly nothing. Their idea idea to solve a financial crisis created by their own stupidity is to kidnap somebody. Yup. Kidnap somebody.
I’ll backtrack. NickKurtandDale.com is a business. Say the address fast and you’ll see why the site title was a bad idea. They have invented a Home Shopping Network gift – the “Shower Buddy,” which was demonstrated in the context of accidentally pantomimed homosexual visuals so we never really get to see what the product is, nor what it does. We take their word for it that the invention is a winner. Before long, the trio are in the offices of Rex and Bert Hanson (Chris Pine and Christoph Waltz) who go agree to do business and then screw the trio like a horny co-ed assistant at a drunken Christmas party.
Critiquing their lack of business savvy is missing the point. The idea of Horrible Bosses 2, as I understand it, is now the fellas are their own horrible bosses, driving their positive actions and assets into the ground as quickly as possible.
Nick, Kurt & Dale are pissed. Why wouldn’t they be? But their anger should be tempered at least slightly by their own stupidity – I felt sorry for these guys in the original film, but watching them do business now convinces 
me they deserved to be cogs, not bosses. Nick can feign adult behavior the best, but the truth is none of three is truly capable of making quality adult decisions. This is confirmed when the three decide to kidnap Chris Pine with the help of laughing gas stolen from Dale’s former employer, Julia (Jennifer Aniston). Caught on film, caught knocking themselves out, caught in Chris Pine’s house, there is absolutely no reason to believe this will end with anything but jail time for these idiots.
I like how the meaning of “Horrible” has changed. Last movie, it described manipulative, parasitic leeches using the position of power to abase underlings. Now? It describes the moronic bosses these underlings have evolved into. Like the first, there is funny here, mostly cenetered around foibles in the gambit. “Why are you holding the ransom phone you were supposed to tape under the bench?” The humor is also much more arm’s length. In Horrible Bosses, one could imagine being Nick or Kurt (maybe not Dale). In this version, I saw none of myself in any of them. I hope you don’t, either.
Ruddy-bud-crud
Three men in the mud
And who do you think they be?
The loser, the failure and the hapless crap-maker
Turn ‘em in, perps all three
Rated R, 108 Minutes
D: Sean Anders
W: Sean Anders & John Morris
Genre: Idiots
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Idiots
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: The frustrated
Parody inspired by “Three Men in a Tub”
