BEFORE: Day 2 of a Jason Bateman 3-part chain, and this just makes sense for Labor Day Weekend, right? Part of being an American worker is having a boss - see, if I just relax and let movies line up with the calendar, that's what they tend to do.
THE PLOT: Dale, Kurt and Nick decide to start their own business but things don't go as planned because of a slick investor, prompting the trio to pull off a harebrained and misguided kidnapping scheme.
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Horrible Bosses" (Movie #1,332)
AFTER: Even though the subject matter was very different, this follows the same sort of pattern as "Let's Be Cops", they're similar in tone in that there's one character who tries to be the voice of reason, and another (OK, two others here) who keep digging the hole deeper and making their situation worse. And it's just as tedious to hear them constantly bicker about what the next move should be, while they keep messing up like the idiots that they are.
I don't get it - are we supposed to see ourselves in this type of character? "Hey, these guys keep fucking everything up, and that's exactly what I always do!" Or, assuming that audience members are relatively intelligent people, are we supposed to just be glad we're smarter than them, and our situations are much better off? It's in the same genre as "The Hangover" - as events spiral out of control, are we supposed to take delight in them, or feel sorry for the people involved? It's difficult to tell.
Our three screw-up heroes have moved on from their previous bad bosses, but after a "Shark Tank"-like business deal goes bad, they concoct a revenge plot (or, rather, one is forced on them) and this leads to all of the secondary characters from the first film getting shoehorned into this one, either because they need the help of those characters, or in the case of Aniston's dentist character, she still wants to sexually pursue her ex-employee. It seems he's the only man to ever turn her down, and this only makes her want him more. They mention many times that she's a sex addict, but it still seems like a bit of a stretch.
I think the worst offense may be abandoning the premise from the first film, which was that these guys were smart, hard-working and deserving of a better situation, but the only things that were holding them back were the troubles caused by their employers. Free from those bosses, that theory is proven wrong in the sequel, as these guys make not just mistakes, but DUMB mistakes. They're easily duped by one adversary after another, so they're not even in control of their destinies when they're running their own heist plan, and they may even have been manipulated into that.
The funniest parts were probably the opening sequence, appearing on a morning talk show, and the bloopers during the closing credits. Much of the rest in-between was a real chore to get through.
Also starring Jason Sudeikis (last heard in "Epic"), Charlie Day (last heard in "The Lego Movie"), Jennifer Aniston (last seen in "We're the Millers"), Chris Pine (last seen in "Into the Woods"), Christoph Waltz (also last heard in "Epic"), Jamie Foxx (last seen in "The Great White Hype"), Kevin Spacey (last seen in "The Life of David Gale"), Jonathan Banks (last seen in "The Cheap Detective"), Lindsay Sloane, with cameos from Keegan-Michael Key (last seen in "Let's Be Cops"), Rob Huebel,
RATING: 3 out of 10 untraceable cell phones
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