SECOND SCREEN
Horrible Bosses 2 Cert: 15A 1hr 49mins I Am Ali Cert: PG 1hr 52mins
Second time around, the resemblance between what we must now call the Horrible Bosses franchise and the Hangover films seems more marked than ever. Both, after all, share a fundamentally bloke-ish cast and, of course, a spectacularly rude sense of humour. What is a little more surprising, though, is that I might be coming to the conclusion that I like the Horrible Bosses comedies rather better. Even when you’re not quite in the mood for almost two hours of crude, sexually themed banter, there’s an underlying vein of endearing silliness, coupled with a fundamental likeability to the central characters. This gaffe-prone trio – Nick (Jason Bateman), Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) and Dale (Charlie Day, pictured below with Jennifer Aniston) – are genuinely fun to spend time with.
Horrible Bosses 2 sees our threesome on the verge of realising their long-held dream of working for themselves. They have the product – a showerhead that dispenses soap and shampoo – and when a catalogue company places an advance order for 100,000 units, they have the backing too.
But when the catalogue boss – Christoph Waltz – double-crosses them, the three friends find themselves almost bankrupt. Unless they can find $500,000, they’re finished. But hey, kidnapping someone might help... particularly if they can kidnap the boss’s scheming son (Chris Pine).
All they need is some inside knowledge, someone who knows about kidnapping and, oh, some knockout gas; all of which is simply an excuse to bring back everyone still standing after the first film – Kevin Spacey as the unprincipled and currently imprisoned company boss Dave Harken; Jamie Foxx as the splendidly incompetent gangster MF Jones; and Jennifer Aniston, as sex-addicted dentist Dr Julia Harris.
The end result… it’s not quite as good as the 2011 original but it has a generous share of very funny moments, including a beautifully underplayed one when they realise they’ve written their kidnap plan on a whiteboard with unerasable, permanent marker.
But with Aniston on particularly game form as the vampish brunette, it’s probably the Sex Addict meeting that Nick gatecrashes that stays in
the memory longest, even if there’s barely a syllable of dialogue that’s printable here.
Momentum does falter a little in the final third, as the kidnapping gets under way, the double-crosses start to emerge and it all threatens to turn into the sort of film we’ve seen many times before.
But Pine, best known for playing Captain Kirk in the rebooted Star Trek franchise and clearly relishing the chance to swap the Starship Enterprise for adult comedy, enthusiastically gives the whole thing a lift, while Bateman, Sudeikis and Day – as what must be the West Coast’s most reluctant criminals – are as likeable and funny as ever. Horrible Bosses 3? Why not?