Horrible Bosses 2

Note: Spoilers are present for the first movie.

Copyright 2014 Warner Brothers

It’s about damn time we reviewed a comedy film here. From John Wick to Interstellar to Exodus, it’s been a long road of serious films for a serious audience. That’s ignored the fact that when it comes to the idea of a popcorn flick, comedy makes up a significant portion of the selection. It even gets it’s own category for awards at the Golden Globes. So for our inaugural comedy review at PopcornFlicks, it was incredibly lucky of us to at least pick a movie that actually made us laugh.

Horrible Bosses 2 features returning stars Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis as Nick, Dale and Kurt respectively, having all quit their respective jobs in order to work towards their dream of entrepreneurship. Never mind the fact that Nick ended the last film as the president of the company and thus already was “his own boss”, the entire goal our three protagonists are working towards even though they already managed to achieve it by the end of the previous film. This pursuit is threatened by Burt and Rex Hanson, played by Christoph Waltz and Chris Pine respectively, the latter of whom is the comedic highlight of the film. In their attempt to protect their business from the Hansons, our lovable trio consult their dear mentor, Dean “Motherfucker” Jones, as played by Jamie Foxx.

The film consists mostly of repeated sex jokes with the odd sprinkle of toilet humor here and there, ranging from sight gags to repeated cussing to “jokes” about female-on-male rape as perpetrated by Dale’s former boss Julia (Jennifer Aniston). Now, to their credit, writers Sean Anders and John Morris never portray Dale’s rape as a good thing, but it should be quite evident that jokes about rape of any kind are not funny. If you do find those jokes funny, you need psychological help. Even worse, some casual pedophilia jokes are tacked on to these already disturbing segments.

Thankfully, those segments take up a small portion of the film, allowing us to watch Charlie Day play Charlie Day in all his chipmunk-voiced glory, Jason Sudeikis play Jason Sudeikis, and Jason Bateman play Jason Bateman. It’s a problem with the current brand of comedy Hollywood has been pumping out for a long time. None of the principal characters in the film are actually acting; rather, they’re all just playing themselves, or at least the focus-group pruned versions of themselves that have evolved throughout all of their films.

In this movie, Jason Sudeikis plays the same character that he did in Hall Pass and We’re the Millers, and it’s simply starting to get stale. Eventually you begin to realize that the entire story simply exists to serve the jokes, when it should really be the other way around. It’s all a gigantic farce created for $42 million dollars to facilitate jokes about poop in order to milk teenage guys and college frat boys for all their money.

The most important thing to consider on that front, however, it that if you’re a fan of low-brow humor, you’re actually going to really enjoy the movie. Sure, it’s just a bunch of poop and sex jokes strung together by some bare semblance of a plot to fill a two hour run-time. The thing is, those poop and sex jokes are very well executed and I can guarantee if you’re a fan, you’re going to hurt yourself from laughing too hard.

The plot doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t need to. It’s a stupid comedy with stupid jokes that will make you shoot soda out your nose and that’s completely alright. It’s fine to turn off your brain for an hour or two and just let yourself laugh at some stupid stuff and feel like a kid again. The verdict is, if you’re a fan of low-brow humor, go watch the movie. If you’re not a fan, find another comedy that’s more suited to your tastes and accept that you’re simply not the target audience for this movie.

Horrible Bosses 2 is well-executed with a balanced main cast that plays off each-other with ease and fill in the gaps in each other’s performances. It’s one of the better comedies to come out this year and if toilet humor is your thing, it’s worth getting the discounted ticket on a Tuesday for half the price. Just make sure your grandmother isn’t in the theater with you or she’ll have a stroke.