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You Can't Keep a Bad Guy Down

Two Bad Guys movies and only one Nice Guys movie? Something is wrong with the system.
Much as I didn’t care for it, I get why The Bad Guys was a success with kids and families. It pops with a manic energy that is very visually appealing, and unlike a lot of other hyperactive contemporary animated films, it is all pretty coherent and tangible. You can follow the action and the comedy beats, and on top of that it is colourful and features a cast of diverse and perfectly broadly designed animal characters. And there is a kind of attractive coolness to their personalities and the slick heist-movie attitude of the film itself. That it’s substance is very mundane doesn’t penetrate these, and I’m sure many a parent is grateful for a film like it to occupy their child’s attention for an hour and a half, even if entirely passively. And hey, at least it’s a mildly original film in a sea of franchises and brands.
Now it is its own brand within DreamWorks though, and some of those temperate qualities of the first film are what had me interested in at least the giving the second a fair chance. This isn’t an obvious write-off series like The Boss Baby. But it is still for its fair flourishes, shallow -as this sequel demonstrates.
Returning to a world where a small handful of anthropomorphic animals live among humans, the crime team formerly known as the Bad Guys are trying to adjust to society in their reformed images and having minimal luck -judged wherever they go for their past deeds. Eventually they are blackmailed into joining forces with a new elite gang on the prowl looking to pull off a highly elaborate gold heist, as their ally the governor resumes her old crime persona to investigate.
The efforts at rehabilitation by the Bad Guys and the push-back received in spite of their honest growth and desire to contribute is the strongest thematic facet of the movie. It makes for a rather poignant commentary on the prejudice towards ex-cons and the refusal of institutions to grant them a second chance or even acknowledge the possibility of a changed heart. A fairly bold statement in a movie like this aimed at kids, allowing them to empathize with those society tells them they shouldn’t. And that desire to demonstrate meaningful reformation is especially focal to the lead character Wolf -voiced again by Sam Rockwell, who plays well the awkward, directionless conundrum of the character. It is of course his idea for the gang to offer police assistance in catching these new bandits to prove themselves and clear their names, given it’s one of their old calling cards is being used. And that itself would have been a decent enough premise for a sequel -the Bad Guys using their talents to find and take down a new sect of criminals. But DreamWorks couldn’t resist more of that banal “bad”-themed marketing (the Michael Jackson song was all over the teasers), and so ultimately this gang is forced back into the criminal fray through the tedium of a framing and misunderstood betrayal.
But of course it is an excuse for the movie to play out a heist again, as the Bad Guys and their captors -a womens’ gang led by a snow tiger voiced by Danielle Brooks- endeavour to steal a smartwatch off a billionaire at a gala. This and an opening flashback sequence designed to contrast their thrilling former lifestyle with their mundane present have been the films most heavily advertised sequences, yet make up fairly small sections of the movie, which in fact spends more time on the mission to space -the goal being to hijack a corporate rocket and use a magnetic device literally called MacGuffinite (a name the characters mildly lampshade) to attract all the world’s gold. An elaborate scheme to be sure, and one that is matched by the hyperbolic energy of this world that skews to the broad in its comic tone. And yet the characters still feel very one-note, with Wolf as the only exception. Even Zazie Beetz’s Diane Foxington, whose past criminal career is a major point of the stakes, has no real facet of interest through her subplot beyond the tame romantic tease between her and Wolf. And the new characters don’t add anything either beyond their designs -which really lean into the anthropomorphism in suspiciously specific ways.
There isn’t much to latch onto in either the world or the characters, that theme of confronting judgement by the public and proving oneself in spite of it never coheres in a satisfactory and resonating way -and you can feel something in the script being held back. In place of this is some fairly quaint humour and toothless satire. Everything about the rocket and the billionaire’s company is intentionally designed to evoke Elon Musk, but the figure himself (voiced appropriately by Colin Jost) is disappointingly a generic archetype rather than a more pointed caricature -one of a few instances where the movie makes a choice seemingly designed towards bland inoffensiveness as much as possible.
The animation remains the strong suit in terms of its appealing visual character and bombastic absurdity, though it comes across less notably in this outing that incorporates broadly staler set-pieces and less action overall. There are high points -a whole stadium of people becoming a homogeneous mass in chasing after the Bad Guys for instance, and some of the stuff on the rocket ship, particularly with regards to getting into it as it takes off, are effectively stylized. And in a couple places the mundane presentation is broken up by a sharp edit or bit of creative visual flare. These showcase the potential of this animation, and indeed more DreamWorks films could learn from it, but it doesn’t distinguish itself terribly, even compared to the first film.
I can’t honestly say if The Bad Guys 2 is much better or worse than the first film. Certainly it is going to be a success, and the movie sets up at the end a wild new context for a third movie. Once again though it proves a rather shallow film for its appealing look and narrative conceit. The kernel of an engaging theme is not allowed room to develop and that may be by design. The base of what these movies offer has demonstrated to DreamWorks that is not an important thing. There is no motive to glean anything more from it -from a studio perspective this perhaps makes it an ideal franchise. Not a great couple of movies though.

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