Like it really rough guy
You may remember The Bad Guys as DreamWorks Animation’s cross-species stab at introducing kids to heist movie tropes. Or you may not: the movie got positive but unenthusiastic reviews, made enough box office receipts to justify a sequel, and… I haven’t heard a single person mention it since. Three years later, that sequel is here. For the most part, it’s a success. This is a sequel that knows its job: get weirder, get louder, have more fun.
The Bad Guys 2 makes the odd but successful choice to back off the plot-heavy twistiness of the original, instead amping up the loopy set pieces. This shifts the movie’s focus towards its biggest strength: the outstanding animation and design of 3D CGI action sequences. Director Pierre Perifel keeps the caper bones but flexes the comic muscles: The shenanigans push farther than I expected into outrageous, almost subversive, scenarios. I will not spoil the ending or post-credits sting, but even if I did, I’m not sure I could convey their kookiness.
After a fun Indiana Jones-flavored flashback prologue, the film’s story picks up where the first one left off, with the reformed crew trying (and failing) to make it straight. Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell) spends down time with Governor Diane Foxington (Zazie Beetz), Mr. Snake (Marc Maron) gets cagey about his new routine and cheerfulness, and Ms. Tarantula (Awkwafina), Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson), and Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos) ping-pong between job applications and existential aimlessness. A slippery new thief called “the Phantom Bandit” starts grabbing headlines by using The ex-Bad Guys’ old calling cards (think Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief), which nudges Commissioner Misty Luggins (Alex Borstein) to suspect the old crew but still lean on them to track down the bandit. And from there the film basically launches into good-spirited wackiness: A sting at a lucha-libre spirals into chaos, and the Governor recreates the iconic interrogation of Hannibal Lector when meeting the previous movie’s villain in prison. Before long, an all-female trio of rival thieves — featuring butch leader Kitty Kat (Danielle Brooks), quick-talking Doom (Natasha Lyonne), and muscle Pigtail Petrova (Maria Bakalova) — yanks the plot’s steering wheel towards “one last heist” that might redeem or ruin The Bad Guys.
Perifel and the animators give the film a caffeinated, sketchbook energy: thick outlines, speed lines, painterly smears. The character designs are mostly terrific fun (though a few of the humans are stuck in bean-mouth hell). The animators turn every chase and skirmish into well-orchestrated and brilliantly composed turmoil. The lucha sequence, in particular, is a micro-masterpiece, staged with breathless momentum and culminating in one of the cleverest uses of space and particle physics in an animated movie since Spider-Verse 2 and Puss in Boots 2. Just as great is the big, gravity-shifting climax, which has apocalyptic vibes, anchored by a central, golden image that makes use of shape and color that borders on abstract. (It also has a fart joke that spans several scenes, but such is the cost of watching movies marketed to the same audience as Dav Pilkey’s books.)
This shift away from character work and towards action is a pleasant change (especially given how mediocre The Bad Guys‘ script was), but it comes with a cost. The main crew’s writing is a little undernourished. The script boxes in the ostensible emotional core of the story, Rockwell’s temptation to backslide into crime, into just a couple of scenes. Another theme that fits into the material, about the lines you’re willing to cross to protect the ones you love, only gets fleeting consideration. But, the writing only exists to provide sufficient stakes for the action, and in that regard it succeeds. (Despite my previous comparison to the visuals, we’re nowhere near the blistering screenplay of Puss in Boots 2 here.)
All in all, The Bad Guys 2 is a much more fun and vibrant experience than the original, which exerted too much energy on its “heist for kiddos” narrative. This sequel feels looser and more assured, like the franchise finally shrugged off its need to prove it knows its Ocean’s 11 multiplication tables and instead made its own kind of Spider-Verse kinetic joyride. If they keep upping the energy in ways suggested by the film’s final act, I would absolutely love to see a third. The box office intake was a modest success, and I expect this will have streaming legs, so I predict we’ll get The Bad Guys 3 that the crew have said in interviews they’d like to make.
Is It Good?
Good (5/8)
Dan is the founder and head critic of The Goods. Follow Dan on Letterboxd. Join the Discord for updates and discussion.