As I said on my Puss in Boots: The Last Wish review, my Peacock subscription was running out, so I watched a couple movies I had missed and heard good things about. Now, in the case of Puss, I had heard really good things about that movie. But as for The Bad Guys 2, well, I hadn’t heard anything bad about it. In fact, critical reception was quite good. Why go for this one with my limited time left? Well, I just rather liked the first one. That was good enough for me.
As for why I took a couple days to write a review, well, for that I have no response. I still have a review to write for Practical Magic after watching it with my girlfriend.
The movie opens with an extended flashback as Mr. Wolf (voice of Sam Rockwell) is leading another complex heist, this one being the inaugural mission for Ms. Tarantula (Awkwafina), the Bad Guys’ hacker. During the heist, Wolf mentions the crimes are committed more to challenge themselves than it is to make a lot of money. Then the movie flashes forward to the present to show Wolf, Tarantula, Shark (Craig Robinson), and Piranha (Anthony Ramos), while reformed, are all struggling to find work and make money, but Snake (Marc Maron) seems to be doing OK doing his own thing. When a Phantom Bandit starts pulling off impossible crimes, the police suspect the Bad Guys are still Bad, and Wolf and the others think Snake relapsed.
It turns out to be something else as a new group of baddies, the Bad Girls, are behind the crimes, and they want the Bad Guys’ help in stealing a whole lot of MacGuffinite. While the Bad Girls’ leader Kitty (Danielle Brooks) is almost certainly bad news and more than willing to use a little blackmail, wild boar Pigtail (Maria Bakalova) is a huge fan girl of the Bad Guys while raven Doom (Natasha Lyonne) is smitten with Snake. What follows is a movie with multiple heists and a lot of action, and Wolf and his crew will need to be at their sharpest to get out of this mess and clear their names. Can they?
OK, this was another fun movie. The heist scenes are full of cartoon physics, the characters are likable, and I honestly just love the look of the movie. Seeing Wolf in his white suit just lounging everywhere really fits the character, the movie’s tone, and the overall sense of style the movie possesses. There’s progress for the relationship between Wolf and the governor/former superthief Diane (Zazie Beetz), and sure, maybe Shark and Piranha don’t have as much to do as Wolf, Snake, and to a lesser extent Tarantula–I suspect Awkwafina’s rising star got her more screentime since the cold open is centered around Tarantula’s joining the team in that flashback–but it’s still just a fun movie.
If there’s a flaw, it’s that the movie is fun and not much else. Will I remember it six months from now? I suspect not. But you know what? Not everything has to be a masterpiece. I’m quite fine with something that is just fun.
Grade: B+
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