Horrible Bosses 2 review: Confessions of the criminally unfunny

"That's because you're Jane Fonda," Jamie Foxx tells Cautious Jason Bateman (the shtick is now so ingrained, we're incorporating it into his name). Can it be that the makers of the so-so, premise-squandering Horrible Bosses have loosely remade Nine to Five? We can only wish it were that coherent or purposeful. This time around, Cautious Jason Bateman and the criminally unfunny Other Two (Day, Sudeikis) have formed their own company.

As manufacturers of the Shower Buddy, they look all set for capitalist glory when Christoph Waltz (wasted) commissions 100,000 units of said item, thereby allowing the ne’er-do-well triumvirate to hire staff and crack wise about sexual harassment. Boom boom.

When Waltz inevitably screws them over, a plan is hatched to kidnap his obnoxious son (Pine). Things go wrong. Then they go right again. Along the way, Kevin Spacey reprises his role from the first one, as does Jamie Foxx. The latter and Pine provide the film with its few (very few) amusing – possibly only bemusing – moments.

The rest is noise. And when we say noise, we mean grown men saying pussy (or puss for extra laziness) over and over. Then Jennifer Aniston pops up and says cock over and over. And that’s as sophisticated at it gets.

Oscar Wilde is often apocryphally credited with the phrase “sarcasm is the lowest form of wit”. But that’s only because Wilde never saw this film’s grim overture: Oh look, their pitch on TV accidentally resembles oral sex! Throughout, many plans are scuppered when bouncing breasts prove distracting.

You could get away with the juvenilia if the script was better, but it's almost as if someone scooped up the scraps from the editing floor of Confessions of a Window Cleaner.

At least they got the first part of the title right.