When did I review Horrible Bosses (2011)?  Does it matter?  In the grand scheme of things, which is a veiled way of referencing God and our place in His Creation, the order in which I give you these reviews means little.  Indeed, The Legionnaire itself is something that nobody is making me do.  All the same, I feel called by God to offer you a Catholic insight on cinema.  Not that they are comparable, but I also have a sense of responsibility to bring you my thoughts on a sequel if a movie has one.  I am prevaricating here because the content in Horrible Bosses is difficult to say anything nice about from any perspective, Catholic or otherwise.  It is full of innuendo and focuses on three men who decide to murder their supervisors rather than deal with their issues in a Christian way.  Followers of God are accused of being too serious, and yet re-read the previous sentence.  Sure, it is meant to be played for laughs but what happens when fiction becomes reality?  I understand that such a scenario is unlikely, but neither should these notions be entirely dismissed.  It is in this context that I give you Horrible Bosses 2 (2014).

As Horrible Bosses 2 begins, it looks like friends Dale Arbus (Charlie Day), Kurt Buckman (Jason Sudeikis), and Nick Hendricks (Jason Bateman) do not have to deal with the title situation.  Instead, they are entrepreneurs, appearing on local news to debut their new invention, the Shower Buddy.  My sense of Catholic decency will keep me from describing how their demonstration goes.  They may have embarrassed themselves on television, but the next day they are called by representatives of an investment company.  This produces a meeting with Rex Hanson (Chris Pine), who tells them that his fund is willing to buy the Shower Buddy along with all rights to it.  Dale and Kurt are excited, but Nick convinces them to hold on to their invention.  More negotiations take place until Rex’s father, Bert Hanson (Christoph Waltz), comes in and gives them one last deal.  Bert tells the three are to take out a loan to produce 100,000 units and upon completion, he will distribute their bathroom gadget.  They all immediately agree and Dale, Kurt, and Nick get to work.  With enthusiasm, they meet their manufacturing quota with a few days to spare and present their achievement to Bert.  With Rex on hand to congratulate his dad, only to have the son chided for the sentiment, Bert tells his erstwhile partners that he is backing out of the deal.  This leaves them $500,000 in the hole with the prospect of being foreclosed upon and seeing their business bought by Bert anyway for pennies on the dollar.  Understandably, they are quite angry.  Once more, instead of trying to find mature solutions, they land on kidnapping.  They learned they are not real criminals the last time they tried to pull an illicit stunt, so, also like before, they seek advice.  Nick’s first idea is that they go see his former boss, David Harken (Kevin Spacey), who is in prison for murder (which happens in the previous film).  David is no friend of theirs and unsurprisingly is not helpful.  There is another person with criminal know-how that they have before asked for insights on illegal activities: Dean “Nickname-Not-Repeated” Jones (Jamie Foxx).  Once Dean’s bizarre negotiations for his fee are negotiated, he tells them to knockout Rex.  The source for what they will use for rendering the billionaire heir comes from Dale’s former employer, the office of Dr. Julia Harris, D.D.S. (Jennifer Aniston).  Predictably, their heist goes awry in a manner in which I will not detail, but it makes her suspicious of what else they might be doing.  What they do after this is take their stolen nitrous oxide to Rex’s mansion in the hopes of using it on their target.  In their ineptitude, they turn the valve on the canister while still hiding in Rex’s closet and put themselves to sleep.  The next morning they awaken as if nothing has happened until they get to their office and discover Rex in the trunk.  He has decided to go along with the abduction scheme in order to get back at his cruel father, though Nick is ready to give up on the enterprise.  In response, Rex manages to win over Dale and Kurt, and this eventually brings round Nick.  It is set into motion already, however, since Rex preemptively sent their ransom note to Bert and threatens to call the police of they do not cooperate.  Speaking of the police, Rex does not expect Bert to contact the authorities, especially when Bert is warned not to do so by the three so-called kidnappers in their fake Southern accents.  Yet, this is exactly what happens, much to Bert’s disappointment and shock.  Nick once more wants to abandon the plan, but they come up with a more elaborate course of action that convinces him to re-commit.  Predictably, things go awry when Kurt inadvertently tapes his own cell phone to the first location they send Bert to instead of the untraceable one they bought for this purpose.  Next, Dr. Harris knocks on the door of their hotel room from which they are monitoring their progress, and she is demanding to have relations with Dale, the only man who has ever refused her.  She blackmails Dale into agreeing just as Stacy Arbus (Lindsay Sloane), his wife, along with their three daughters, arrive.  Dale manages to lock Dr. Harris in the bathroom and he, Kurt, and Nick carry on with their mission.  As they are getting the money from Bert, Rex appears, kills his father, and implicates his one-time partners in the murder.  With police sirens headed their way, Dean appears to give them a ride.  He gets them to the warehouse where Rex is supposed to be tied up, but makes off with the money before the cops arrive.  Rex attempts again to place the blame on Dale, Kurt, and Nick, but then Kurt’s cell phone goes off in Rex’s pocket, which (trust me on this one) shows that Rex is behind this strange situation.  Trying to avoid capture, Rex takes Detective Hatcher (Jonathan Banks) captive, but the officer is saved by Dale.  While Dale is shot for his efforts, and their company later foreclosed upon, his heroics keep them out of jail.  The final scene is of Dale, Kurt, and Nick visiting a verbally abusive Dave in jail, who bought the rights to Shower Buddy.

This has nothing to do with Horrible Bosses 2 specifically, but a little while ago a friend of mine suggested that I include my Catholic commentary on the films I review throughout the discussion.  When doing the synopsis, I look for specific moments to do this, but I feel I have done well with doing so as well with the other paragraphs.  If you are familiar with my process, you will know that this is the point at which I try to dig deeper into ways in which God could be speaking through a given film.  The best I have up to now is that, well, at least Dale, Kurt, and Nick are not attempting murder in the sequel?  That is, of course, ridiculous because God does not want you to murder or steal, people or things, in any situation.  I mean, those two crimes are addressed in the Ten Commandments, though there is no mention of kidnapping exactly.  Nonetheless, I think you get the idea.  There is also little to say about these three friends.  The point of each of these movies, not just the sequel, is to put these comedic personalities together and let them produce laughter.  That sounds good, but this admittedly square Catholic wishes their talents could be used in a plot that did not involve such deviant behavior.  They each seem perfectly fine with wronging their friends in their own interests, too.  For a moment, I thought there might have been hope for Dr. Harris, the sex-crazed dentist.  When we are reintroduced to her in this one, she is at a meeting for sex addicts that begins with prayer.  Yet, it turns out that she goes to these gatherings in order to find people (note the genderless designation) with which to hook-up.  I get that the title says probably all one needs to know about such characters.  At the same time, I wish the so-called protagonists had more to offer in terms of redeeming their behavior through my Catholic analysis.

As with its predecessor, there is little to recommend about Horrible Bosses 2.  As usual, I sat through it waiting for anything that could draw my Catholic attention.  The only laughter I get out of such productions is when they have the outtakes at the end.  There is more genuine humor in those clips than in any other part of the movie.  The rest, though, is not worth sitting through to get to the credits.