Cert – PG, Run-time – 1 hour 44 minutes, Directors – Pierre Perifel, JP Sans
The Bad Guys have gone good, but the world struggles to accept them as such. To prove their change of heart they try to catch a new criminal mastermind striking the city, only to be blackmailed into their old ways one last time.
2022’s The Bad Guys was a pleasant, energetic surprise from Dreamworks. I left it more than happy to see further escapades from the titular group of criminals, even having turned good at the end of the first instalment. The opening to the sequel promises much of the same. We’re launched into an energetic car chase sequence – with a moment involving a crane and a magnet which induces a similar giggle-inspiring feeling to The Fast And The Furious franchise’s later instalments – full of bright, bursting animation – the studio seemingly inspired by anime visuals once again.
The team (voiced by Sam Rockwell, Craig Robinson, Marc Maron, Awkwafina and Anthony Ramos) are trying to prove to the world that they’ve gone good. But, the city struggles to believe them, especially during job interviews for a position at the bank they robbed three times. To prove they’ve gone good the team plan to capture a phantom thief who has been stealing notable items all across the city. However, the thief turns out to be a trio of Bad Guys fans (Danielle Brooks, Maria Bakalova and Natasha Lyonne), blackmailing the gang into helping them pull off one last heist, with unknowing global consequences.
From the opening car chase returning director Pierre Perifel, and co-director JP Sans, try to keep their feet pressed down on the peddle as best as possible. The screenplay is full of plenty of witty gags, and some good fart jokes in the climactic sequences, and they help to move things along with a quick pace. While there may be some familiar beats here and there they don’t tend to overly get in the way, at least as much as the sidelining of two of the three new criminal gang members. While leader Kitty Kat (Brooks) gets much of the spotlight, Doom (Lyonne) only really gets her moments in relation to Marc Maron’s Mr Snake, and Bakalova’s Pigtail feels like a cookie cutter excitable figure with only a few lines of scattered dialogue. The downfall of this pair feels largely linked to the fact that unlike the titular team, aside from their proper introduction, they don’t have something specific they can contribute to the heist at hand and so feel more like backup or just there for the sake of having a team instead of one new villain.
Yet, a sense of fast-paced fun is still to be found with the main focus being on The Bad Guys themselves. I left The Bad Guys 2 having once again had a pleasant time and being more than open for further outings for the chaotic group at the heart of the film, whether they be doing good or bad. Even when things stray into convention, or even for an animated film with talking animals raise questions as to how likely or survivable something is, there’s an easily embraceable ordered chaos unfolding on screen in colourful, energetic bursts.
There may be some familiar beats present in the narrative, and supporting characters might falter with an imbalance of details, but The Bad Guys 2 keeps its foot on the peddle for another fun, entertaining and energetically animated ride.
Just A Little Bit Random 