SPEED 2 Month Day 22: Just Horrible

Sequels make up a good portion of SPEED 2 Month largely due to the fun of attacking terrible attempts at making a cheap buck off the original. During 2014’s SPEED 2 Month, an in-depth report on HIGHLANDER 2: THE QUICKENING explored the positive outcome of thoughtless money grubbing, regardless of quality or intelligence. You can read it here, if you missed it. Today, A Leaf on the Wind will be eyeing a similar idea, if only in the vein of sequel driven drivel.

HORRIBLE BOSSES, a 2011 film starring Jason Bateman, Charlie Day and Jason Sudeikis, with Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx and Kevin Spacey in supporting roles, was a breakout success. Regardless of how amusing the movie was (or wasn’t, in the valued opinion of A Leaf on the Wind), it hardly deserved a sequel. Bateman didn’t do a whole lot beyond his continuing role as straight man; Day was annoying and Sudeikis boring. Aniston went way, way beyond her “good girl” role, which was likely a large portion of the audience draw here. Other than Spacey, little more is noteworthy for this drudgery of stupid Hollywood selling lots of stupid to stupid people shelling out 10 bucks to see stupid. So, why not make a sequel, right?

A horrible depiction of who is in the film

HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 stumbled its stupid way to the stupid… er, silver screen Thanksgiving weekend of 2014, with the hopes people still dulled by their overeating of turkey and tryptophan would not notice how dumb the movie was. Once again, Bateman, Day and Sudeikis return to a script that has as little to do with the original movie as possible, in hopes to light some magic under the spotty asses of those involved. Aniston comes back again, with dialogue straight out of a higher budget porn, with Spacey stealing scenes from his imprisonment (his character was jailed at the end of the original flick). Jamie Foxx returns as well, with new characters from the excellent Christoph Waltz and the not-Captain Kirk Chris Pine. About 20 minutes into the plot of HORRIBLE BOSSES 2, I stopped listening and started flipping through potential other movies for SPEED 2 Month. HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 wasn’t just stupid in the way the first film was, it was excruciatingly stupid. It was tediously boring. It was everything the first movie was, quintupled for the added benefit for the addicted movie goer.

The incomperable Christoph Waltz

To explain the plot that’s trying to be complex, the three principals have gone into business for themselves, making a rather stupid product. They then sell that stupid product to Waltz and Pine’s company, who them dick the threesome over. The trio then tries to get even with the help of Foxx, who they’d hired in the first film to help them do the stupid things they did then. They’re so dumb this time, even Foxx’s character has to explain to them, and the audience, that they’re so fucking stupid they should be institutionalized just on that alone. Things get dumber and dumber and dumber, involving Aniston in part, as well as Pine’s character trying to get even with Waltz. By the time the movie concludes, you’re in pain just trying to get away from it. It is in the opinion of A Leaf on the Wind that if you were to drink six bottles of Jeppson’s Malort, you would lose less brain cells than if you watch HORRIBLE BOSSES 2.

Let us do a complete comparison: SPEED is to HORRIBLE BOSSES as a smallish budget (30 million for SPEED, 37 million for HORRIBLE BOSSES) is to high profits (350 million and 208 million respectively). SPEED 2 is to HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 as a terrible idea made through dollar signs is to a quickly made shitstorm (less than three years for both movie sequels from their original film). If A Leaf on the Wind was outfitted with mathematical geniuses, an algebraic formula could probably be put together for Hollyweird to use when determining profitability of potential sequels. Hell, if Billy Beane could make it work for baseball, why not make it work for the film industry? That is, unless they’re actually doing this already and we the public are getting tortured with more Adam Sandler movies than we need. Damned math.

HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 is better than SPEED 2. It is, really. First, the budget wasn’t increased to an astronomical amount and second, it didn’t exactly lose money. It pulled in 102 million off a 42 million dollar output, far surpassing SPEED 2 in the box office. It doesn’t have Jason Patric in it, so that’s a plus. Christoph Waltz makes pretty much anything he’s in better, so that helps. If he has put some of the creepy nastiness into his character here that he did in INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, it might have been even more entertaining. Regardless, he was fun to watch, as I think he enjoyed playing the character for what it was. Pine wasn’t bad either, honestly. At the end things went way off the rails, as a stupid “comedy” tends to do when the plot just doesn’t stick, but he was fun to watch if you pay attention, which A Leaf on the Wind admittedly didn’t. The final thing that makes HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 better than SPEED 2 is this: Naughty Aniston!

Next up, superheroes!

A gratuitous shot of Jennifer Aniston, not from HORRIBLE BOSSES 2.