The first Bad Guys (2022) stood out for several reasons, primarily for a voice cast that sounded like the most stellar Sundance movie ever. The reason it worked, however, is that it capitalized on parent fatigue, replacing the black-and-white lecturing of the average Disney morality tale with subversive shades of grey, asking kids to root for a criminal gang of animals that, for a time, are only pretending to reform (until they inevitably do for real). This premise immediately sets up a tricky double negative for the sequel: where do they go next? By pretending not to have not reformed all along (or not)?
This question is staved off for a good 15 minutes or so by a hectic opening sequence set in Cairo five years previously. Crime lord Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell) has put his squad to work on a heist involving Egyptian billionaire Mr. Soliman (Omid Djalili). Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson) leads the attack, with backup from Mr. Snake (Marc Maron), Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos) and Ms. Tarantula (Awkwafina). The object of the exercise is to steal Soliman’s prize possession: a prototype sports car, never driven. “We did all this for a car?” sighs Mr. Shark, but as Mr. Wolf often says, “A heist is never about the loot, it’s a power move.”
This opening salvo is also something of a flex, as the team cram into the car and zoom out into the city, where they are chased by dozens of cop cars. The action is almost overwhelming (I was reminded of haughty author P.L. Travers visiting Disneyland in Saving Mr. Banks and asking, snootily, “Is it all like this?”). Thankfully, it does soon calm down, as the action returns to present-day L.A., where Mr. Wolf and co are apparently intent on keeping to the straight and narrow. Going straight, though, is proving difficult, and after a series of high-profile thefts — attributed by the media to “The Phantom Bandit” — the Police Chief, now Commissioner, suspects that Mr. Wolf is behind them.
Using his team’s criminal expertise, the Mr. Wolf works out that the thief is stealing items made from McGuffinite, which is how they find themselves at a Mexican wrestling match, where the main prize — The Belt of Guadalamango — is made of the stuff. The stakeout does not go to plan, however, and Mr. Wolf’s crew find themselves trapped by rival bandit Kitty Kat (Danielle Brooks). Kitty Kat wants Mr. Wolf to help her steal a space rocket from the famous Moon X tech brand, and to make sure he goes along with her plan, Kitty Kat blackmails him with footage that will reveal that his secret crush — Governor Diane Foxington (Zazie Beetz) — used to be the infamous Crimson Paw, as seen in the first movie.
This leverage, being so reliant on an almost entirely unseen backstory, is probably the film’s most serious weakness, since Diane is pretty much an extended cameo in the movie and thoroughly upstaged by Brooks’s ass-kicking Kitty Kat. For a comedy, though, it’s not particularly funny either; the references are all over the place — one minute there’s a bank manager who looks like former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, the next there’s a reference to The A-Team (indeed, the whole set-up is an amalgam of Tarantino’s first two movies, now over 30 years old). If there was ever any political satire here, it was rinsed out long ago. Is Moon X a reference to SpaceX? Is Mr. Moon’s home based on Mar-a-Lago? And might Kitty Kat’s pugnacious, Slavic henchwoman Pigtail (Maria Bakalova) be channeling Melania when she warns, “Step aside before anger becomes punch”?
With half an hour to go, however, something completely unexpected happens. Just as the labored comedy threatens to run out of steam, director Pierre Perifel switches back into action mode, first with an extraordinarily intense chase involving Mr. Moon’s just-launched rocket, followed by an incredibly well rendered, ’70s Bond-esque sequence set aboard a space station, as Kitty Kat reveals the real object of her crimewave. Though late to kick in, this much-needed fuel injection sets up an intriguing premise for a third Bad Guys, positing an Austin Powers-style makeover and a plum role for returning villain Marmalade, a seriously pumped guinea pig voiced by Richard Ayoade. Like Mr. Wolf and his motley menagerie, The Bad Guys somehow succeeds against the odds.
Title: The Bad Guys 2
Director: Pierre Perifel
Screenwriters: Yoni Brenner and Etan Cohen, based on the books by Aaron Blabey
Cast: Sam Rockwell, Craig Robinson, Danielle Brooks, Marc Maron, Awkwafina, Anthony Ramos, Richard Ayoade, Zazie Beetz, Maria Bakalova, Omid Djalili
Distributor: DreamWorks Animation
Running time: 1 hr 44 mins
