Horrible Bosses 2 (2014)

The first Horrible Bosses film in 2011 was disposable rubbish, Jennifer Aniston as a sex obsessed boss was an utterly ridiculous character too far, but the whole thing was forgotten about in five minutes and didn't leave an impression on me at all.

Horrible Bosses 2 won't leave much of an impression either, apart from the fact that it's considerably worse than its predecessor.

What's most surprising is that I laughed out loud twice in the opening fifteen minutes or so, but you quickly realise the insanely over the top and irritating characters aren't just panicking at the early situation thrown at them- this is how they behave all the time.

Kevin Spacey turns up very briefly and more or less steals the film (whatever he may or may not have done off the screen doesn't suddenly make all his previous acting performances terrible) although having said that, there's nothing of a film for him to steal. As far as the plot goes, there's something about kidnapping Chris Pine's insufferable character, then not kidnapping him but pretending to kidnap him, in the hopes of getting a ransom from Christoph Waltz, who looks like he enjoyed his one day of filming to pick up a presumably lucrative pay check.

Jennifer Aniston returns for what one can only assume was an enormous payday; she is dreadful in admittedly one of the most stupid and unamusing characters ever put to screen.

The film is so astonishingly dunce-like that it's really hard to imagine who it's playing to, I really struggle to think of what sort of person would sit down and laugh consistently through this. Horrible Bosses 2 isn't a hateful film in the vein of How To Be Single (2016), it's more along the lines of Bad Neighbours 2 (2016) although Horrible Bosses 2 does have the slight advantage of housing Jason Bateman, who ever since Arrested Development (2003-2019) would really have to go some to takeaway my fondness for him.

Mindless tommyrot. 2.1/10