“Horrible Bosses 2”: Making a virtue out of stupidity and nastiness

Comedy. R. 108 minutes.

At the risk of suggesting that “Horrible Bosses 2 has a compelling reason to exist, it’s worth noting that the movie does function, on one level, as an anticapitalist revenge fantasy aimed at the excesses of the 1 percent.

Mainly, however, this inane and incredibly tasteless sequel qualifies as an excuse to bring back those hard-working funnymen Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis for another round of amateurcriminal hijinks and semiimprovised vulgarity, jabbing away repeatedly at some elusive comic sweet spot where nastiness and egregious stupidity collide — and very occasionally hitting the mark.

Predicated on a sentiment best articulated by Homer Simpson (“Kill my boss? Do I dare live out the American dream?”), the Seth Gordon-directed “Horrible Bosses” was a sloppily entertaining action-comedy that ended with Nick (Bateman), Kurt (Sudeikis) and Dale (Day) successfully escaping the clutches of their awful employers, even if their planned triple homicide didn’t entirely come off. In the new movie, directed by Sean Anders from a script he wrote with JohnMorris, our heroes have liberated themselves fromtheir dayjob drudgery and formed their own company, centered on a home-ablution aid called the Shower Buddy.

After trying to publicize their new invention, during which they manage to drop a racist epithet and an onanistic sight gag on live TV, they realize they need a wealthy investor to help them manufacture and distribute their product. Enter Bert Hanson (ChristophWaltz), the smarmy CEO of a retail giant, who offers to bankroll their first 100,000 units for a cool $3 million, which they happily accept — only to find themselves royally screwed over when Hanson reneges on their deal, determined to put them out of business and then buy up what remains at super-low prices.

With no legal recourse, Nick, Kurt and Dale decide to kidnap Hanson’s handsome, preening son, Rex (Chris Pine), and demand a $500,000 ransom. Naturally, their criminal instincts prove no sharper than their business sense, prompting a return visit to the seedy barwhere their old friend Dean “Mother------” Jones (an endearing Jamie Foxx) gives them advice on how to be all disreputable. They also stop by the local prison to get tips fromNick’s former horrible boss— or rather, his still-horrible former boss, happily played once again by Kevin Spacey, snarling as only Kevin Spacey can.

Kidnapping Rex turns out to be more of a handful than anyone anticipated, and Pine’s energetic turn as a billionaire playboy with some serious daddy issues gives the proceedings a shot of adrenaline.

In the most appalling subplot— the one so thoroughly unnecessary that it winds up feeling almost essential— our heroes once again find themselves tangling with Dale’s ex-superior, Dr. Julia Harris (Jennifer Aniston), a sexually rapacious dentist who has no qualms about drilling anyone in her path.

The wild card this time is Day, who seems to have imbibed helium in between takes, pushing his hyper-neurotic-humanchipmunk routine to often excruciating extremes. There are times when you may wish he’d tone it down, but toning it down would probably have been antithetical to the spirit of the whole enterprise, reducing “Horrible Bosses 2 to the level of forgettable mediocrity rather than the memorable, even indelible awfulness to which it cheerfully and sometimes successfully aspires.