By Ellen Siefke
Editor-In-Chief
I had planned to spend my Friday night seeing “Mockingjay: Part One,” but because apparently it’s a popular movie, tickets were sold out, and I got stuck with “Horrible Bosses 2.” Instead of ogling Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth, I watched Jason Bateman , Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day act like a bunch of naive idiots under the impression that businessmen are trustworthy and friendly individuals.
I was sorely disappointed, not just by the lack of eye candy. Unfortunately, the movie focused more on dropping f-bombs every other word and crass humor than coming up with a decent plot.
However, I do commend the actors. Bateman, Sudeikis and Day played the motley crew of Nick Hendricks, Kurt Buckman and Dale Arbus to perfection. Bateman was Nick, the more serious leader of the group whose dull-headed companions make him look like a genius. Sudeikis starred as Kurt, a dunderhead who talks far too much and may have a part-time job as a professional hot female oggler. Day rounded the group out as Dale, the married daddy of triplets who always swoops in with ridiculous ideas and messes up everything.
Together, the actors played three guys who decide to open up their own business with their revolutionary invention, the Shower Buddy, perfect for performing all your basic bathing needs in less than 60 seconds. The brief cameo on screen showed only globs of shampoo cascading down on Kurt’s head, though, so I don’t plan on purchasing one anytime soon.
Unfortunately, this stellar acting was squandered by director Sean Anders’ desperation to outdo the original “Horrible Bosses,” as every other line contains a half-baked attempt at humor. There were a few bits of silver lining, some legitimate jokes that had me laughing out loud, but the majority of the humor was crass and just plain stupid. This movie tries so hard to be comedy gold that the plot is buried under the avalanche of bad jokes and sad laughs.
For example, the name of the company is NickKurtDale, a five-year-old-esque combination of the founders’ names. Now say it five times fast. Yeah. Hilarious.
I can only imagine the conversation writers Anders and fellow writer John Morris had about this. “Hey, let’s have them call the company NickKurtDale so it sounds like they’re saying the n-word! It’ll be hilarious!” Call me overly sensitive, but I didn’t find that one too funny.
It also didn’t help that Anders clearly used the R rating to his advantage, not hesitating to drop f-bombs every other line. Seriously, if you removed them, the movie would be about half as long. And calling a character Motherf*cker Jones to make it more gangsta? Nice. The writers went to impressive lengths to ensure we all understood that as an R-rated movie, they were free to swear willy nilly.
Even worse was the random addition of Jennifer Aniston as Dr. Julia Harris, a member of a sex addict support group with an insatiable appetite for men. She added nothing whatsoever to the story. I’m pretty sure Aniston’s sole purpose in this flick was to allow for sexual humor in all forms. But just like the other jokes, it was too much with too little quality. In all of her scenes, I might as well been listening to a conversation between two horny teenagers. Again, the whole R-rating thing was taken to the extreme.
Overall, “Horrible Bosses 2” focused too much on making a big comedic production for the ages and lacked any production value. With the deluge of humorless line, the plot was lost and the actors’ fantastic work wasted.