The Bad Guys (2022)
Rated PG for action and rude humor
I’ll be
frank, I only saw this movie because somebody else paid for the tickets. It was
the middle of a long, ten-day hitch in a place with no cell service, we had to
travel into town so I could buy some cheap Walmart work boots because the
person who sold me my nice Red Wings mis-sized me and gave me a pair that
turned out to be too small, and two of my co-workers wanted to see this while
we were there. That’s how I saw DreamWorks Animation’s latest, a distinctly
unimpressive mix of a crime caper and a “funny animal” cartoon that was amusing
in parts, had a great cast and art design, and started promisingly, but which
turned out to be a junky mess with a threadbare, predictable plot and a moral so
on-the-nose it felt like it was talking down to its target audience, but also
deeply muddled by the film’s third-act plot twist. Forget mentioning better
animated films by Disney and Pixar, I’ve seen DreamWorks themselves do far
better with their movies, whether they’re making comic satires like Shrek,
stabs at Pixar-style fantasy drama like How to Train Your Dragon, or
even just silly goofs like Sing. No, this felt more like what I’d expect
from Illumination, something to throw on in the living room or your kids’
tablet when you need to shut them up so you can get on with whatever you were
doing.
At its
heart, this is a kid-friendly version of a heist flick, the gimmick being that
the criminal protagonists are all animals that pop culture deems “scary”: a
wolf, a snake, a piranha, a shark, and a tarantula. After they get
busted carrying out a heist at a charity gala, the governor puts them into a
special rehabilitation program run by the goody-two-shoes totally-not-evil guinea pig philanthropist Professor Marmalade. From there, we get a bunch of riffs on
much better (and less kid-friendly) crime movies, a plot that jumps all over
the place, world-building that feels like it exists purely to justify the plot
rather than craft a world without thinking about the logical questions (so,
humans and talking animals live together without comment? An asteroid nearly
destroyed the city some time ago?), the character who you figured out in five
minutes was evil all along turning out to be evil all along, and a third-act
shift into a completely different type of movie, all of it tied together by
funny hijinks involving funny animals that got a few chuckles out of me but not
much else.
All the
while, the film was aiming for a message about how you shouldn’t judge a book
by its cover, and in favor of rehabilitative approaches to criminal justice,
that it hammered into the viewer’s skull every chance it got. Had the film been
consistent about it, I might have shrugged it off as annoying but harmless and
well-intentioned. However, the character who promotes this message for most of
the movie turns out to have nefarious motives, which sends the message that
proponents of restorative justice have a hidden agenda that goes against the
public good, a message that runs directly counter to what the film is trying to
say on the matter. I’ve enjoyed movies that promoted messages that I agreed
with in a heavy-handed yet consistent manner (such as the sequels to The
Purge with their no-holds-barred middle fingers to reactionary politics and
gun culture, or the 2019 version of Black Christmas with its feminist
rage at how society treats sexual assault), as well as movies that promoted
messages I disagreed with in a manner that still made sense and felt like they
had some thought put behind them (such as The Exorcist’s presentation of
old-time religion as the decadent modern world’s only salvation, or Kingsman: The Secret Service’s celebration of aristocracy and all the most dated
tropes of ‘60s spy flicks). But when a film directly undercuts its stated
message with the machinations of its plot, I can’t help but cringe a little. What I got here felt like a family film version of The Welder, one of my least favorite films of last year, perhaps not as egregious in how badly it shot itself in the foot but still feeling like it had no idea what it wanted to say.
Shame,
because on the surface, there’s a lot to like here. The visual design is
stunning, especially its city, feeling like an ever-so-slightly fantastical and
exaggerated parody of sun-baked Los Angeles that veers heavily towards the
larger-than-life and the comically grotesque. The characters were all striking
and had creative designs, and they had a great voice cast bringing them to
life, especially some actors in roles that were nearly unrecognizable from
their real-life personas. Even if they were rather two-dimensional, between
their designs and their actors I felt that I’d like to see them again in a
better movie. Where the writers failed, the animators at least understood the
assignment and delivered a film that breezed by for ninety minutes.
The Bottom Line
The Bad Guys is, unfortunately, a pretty subpar film. Not a wretched one, but if you’re a parent, you have way better options
that’ll offer more value for both yourself and your kid.
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