Jennifer Aniston, Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudeikis are back for a follow-up to their hit comedy that has none of the laughs of the original.
Chris Pine, Charlie Day, Jason Bateman, and Jason Sudeikis in Horrible Bosses 2.
John P. Johnson/Warner Bros.
In 2011, Horrible Bosses was a hit — and a big one, given the budget. And these days, that isn't just cause for celebration, it's a sign to set up a sequel (opening Nov. 26) to extract the maximum possible profit from an idea, even one as slender as the concept behind the first film: A trio of everyman schlubs come up with a plan to kill their abusive bosses, and do a generally terrible job of it.
Though Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudeikis starred as the movie's idiotic threesome, the bosses gave the film its comic bite. Big stars Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell, and Kevin Spacey cut loose as the nymphomaniac dentist, incompetent cokehead, and corporate sadist terrorizing the main characters, respectively.
Directed by Seth Gordon (Identity Thief), Horrible Bosses was a tolerable comedy, and a little more interesting than the audience might have expected from the dark edge of its suburban setting. Its characters were so unimaginative and white bread, so ineffectual and set in their ways, that murder seemed to them a more likely bet than changing jobs, careers, or moving somewhere else.
And Horrible Bosses 2 feels unnecessary (as well as painful) not just because the initial movie left no story threads that needed to be taken up or characters that demanded to be revisited, but because it makes the first film feel worse in retrospect by stomping all over what made it work in the first place.
John P. Johnson/Warner Bros.
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