Confidence. It goes a long way. I personally don’t think The Bad Guys was among the greatest animated films of all time. But the filmmakers certainly carry themselves like it belongs among the Toy Storys and How to Train Your Dragons. That belief goes a long way to making the sequel survive the quality dip most films see in the 2nd outing.
The end of The Bad Guys turned into The Good Guys. Misters Wolf (Sam Rockwell), Shark (Craig Robinson), Piranha (Anthony Ramos) and “Webs” (Awkwafina) are past their crime days, and trying to make good. Mr. Snake (Marc Maron) has found his yoga people with Susan (Natasha Lyonne). And Diane Foxington (Zazie Beetz) is no longer the “Crimson Paw” fighting crime now as the Governor. But that shady past has caught the eye of a couple up and coming criminals, Pigtail (Maria Bakalova) and leader Kitty Kat (Danielle Brooks), who are baffling police chief Misty Luggins (Alex Borstein) with their recent criminal pursuits.
Director Pierre Perifel and writers Etan Coen and Yoni Brenner give us more of what worked in the first…but dutifully bigger, like all sequels do. Heist movies are fun already, but animated heist movies? You have carte blanche to disobey the laws of physics to have Wolf fly through all sorts of contraptions/quagmires to end up precisely where he needs to, culminating in a color explosion that will blow the minds of the 4-8 year old audience this movie is intended for. And that’s just the first 10 minutes! The creative team just ups the ante with each new elaborate crime sequence, eventually ending up where everyone has to go when you’ve hopped across the entire planet. You can tell they worked from the ending backwards, but it’s a good place to end.
And yet, The Bad Guys 2 can’t help but be charming. That’s cause Sam Rockwell oozes swagger and charisma, as well as most of his cast. Everyone’s game to play and have fun here, even Kitty Kat the main antagonist, whom Danielle Brooks can’t help but make us like even when we shouldn’t. We’ve grown up a little too. The Mr. Snake/Susan romance flirts with the weird/creepy line a lot, thanks to the terrific work of Marc Maron and Natasha Lyonne. The fart jokes are still here, but in this case, are used much more amusingly than they were in the simpler first movie. And the main message is more complex than it was in the first movie, trying to explain to kids what makes fear and respect different. But never fear, cause Shark is ready and willing to racially insult everyone with his “master of disguise brilliance.”
90 minutes later, and we’re out! The Bad Guys 2 is here to entertain, and not be anything too serious. Kids will love it, and parents won’t hate it. That’s always a win! No Billie Eilish song this time though y’all, sorry.