Critic Reviews

The miraculous surprise is that Horrible Bosses 2 isn't terrible at all. It's looser, breezier, more confident than its predecessor.

Horrible Bosses 2 is harsh and tasteless, not to mention broad and shameless, but that’s not a bad thing in this case. Softness and good taste, as well as restraint and carefulness, are the enemies of comedy, and “Horrible Bosses 2” is a very funny movie.

The humor ranges from situational gags to wordplay both clever and juvenile. Despite routine lapses into gay panic and the kind of dick-stroking shadowplay that was exhausted a decade ago by the Austin Powers franchise, there are strong laughs sprinkled throughout, culminating in an unexpectedly inspired climactic car chase.

It's the small, tossed-off moments — Bateman's deadpan mugging, Day's frenzied cluelessness, and Sudeikis' smarmy one-liners — that land the best.

Fear not. It’s as silly as the first, a shade faster and nastier (though also sloppier) and features a new psycho more dangerous than anyone in the original.

A new misadventure whose negligibly refined formula somehow ends up being more consistently entertaining.

Your opinion of this unasked-for but likable comedy sequel depends entirely on whether your reaction to the statement “It’s better than the first one” is 1) “Dear God, it could hardly be worse” or 2) “Awesome!”

Looser, more conventional, and highly dependent on the enjoyably rambling bro-banter of NickKurtDale Inc, Horrible Bosses 2 is a mostly-cosy caper that gives off rather less blackly comic energy than its predecessor.

So the big surprise of Horrible Bosses 2 is how far it gets on the hopped-up jabberjaw alliance of Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day. In the 2011 “Bosses,” they were swamped by the conceit: White-collar pals try to kill awful employers. Now, freed up to free-associate, they’re totally winning.

The laughs don't linger, even within individual scenes. What remains, reinforced by a set of end-credit outtakes, is the sense that Sudeikis, Day, Bateman, and Pine had a really good time making a sort of okay movie.