Pierre Perifel’s hit animated film “The Bad Guys” was bright, it was colorful, it was funny, and it was — in defiance of the odds and expectations — one of the best heist movies of the 21st century. The film had all the makings of a great crime caper and nestled them inside a satisfying story about the complexity of redemption. It’s hard to convince people you’re a good person when you’ve done bad things in your past. And when you’ve done so many bad things you’re literally called “The Bad Guys,” it’s danged near impossible.
The sequel, “The Bad Guys 2,” has a similar idea on its mind. At the end of the first movie, Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell), Mr. Snake (Marc Maron), Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson), Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos) and Ms. Tarantula (Awkwafina) saved the city but turned themselves in. Now they’re out of prison. They served their time and they’re eager to re-enter society and live law-abiding, respectable lives.
The problem is, they literally can’t do that. “The Bad Guys 2,” though rapturously animated and somewhat diverting, is a fundamentally sad tale. It’s about America’s insistence that the prison system works, even though as a society, we hypocritically reject the idea that rehabilitation is possible. The Bad Guys can’t get a job. They can’t catch a break. Everyone’s just waiting for them to slip up and return to their life of crime, because nobody will let them do anything else. The world around them insists that their past should define their future.
But when Wolf gets the idea to catch another gang of thieves, it seems like maybe this is the secret to their public acceptance. The Bad Guys can use their ill-gotten skills to get the other ill-gotters. But it turns out that’s just a trap, and before long they’re framed for yet another heist. Almost everyone who ever trusted The Bad Guys now says they secretly knew they’d never change. And the only way out of this predicament is to embrace the tragic cycle of recidivism by pulling, you guessed it, yet another heist.
The other gang of thieves is led by Kitty Cat, an anthropomorphic snow leopard. She’s played by Oscar-nominee Danielle Brooks (“The Color Purple”). Kitty Cat looks like she lifted her whole vibe from Cynthia Erivo’s character in “Widows” but hey, if you’re going to steal, steal from the best. She represents everything Wolf fears, that he’s trapped himself in a hopeless cycle, and that redemption will be forever out of reach. The only way to live, therefore, is to live outside of the law.
Kitty Cat’s got a plan that is — even in a silly animated film about animal people who’ve watched Michael Mann’s “Heat” too many times — absolutely ridonkulous. By the time this story winds up in outer space, it’s like… look, it’s very pretty to look at but sheesh, how do you lose an audience when one of your main characters was a farting piranha? You primed the pump for nonsense and then you shoved a rock in the spout, so all the nonsense backfires, breaking your film and leaving the audience frustratingly incensed. Or at least non-nonsensed.
The problem with “The Bad Guys 2” isn’t the cast. They’re all wonderful. The problem certainly isn’t the animation. It’s one of the prettiest films to come out of Dreamworks Animation, and that’s no small compliment. The problem is, we don’t just love these characters, we love them so much we take them seriously. When the Bad Guys get depressed because nobody wants to hire them and they’re about to lose their home, we get depressed too. When it seems like nobody trusts them no matter how hard they try, while they genuinely try to turn over a new leaf, we feel that dagger in our hearts.
So when they wind up in outer space doing just… just the weirdest dang thing, it’s hard to care.
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It’s not that the film can’t get away with silliness. The wacky lucha libre scene ties into The Bad Guys’ sense of public failure and humiliation. They thought they were faces, but the audience thinks they’re heels. That’s funny and it ties into their characters. The zany wedding heist almost falls apart because their illicit past unexpectedly returns to haunt them. The point is, the story can tie into the message, even when the message is dead serious and the story is absurd.
But in a disappointing miscalculation, “The Bad Guys 2” swings way too hard for its epic finale, making all its three-dimensional visual wonders feel one-dimensional. It’s nothing more than razzle-dazzle. In the end this movie doesn’t open your eyes, it rolls them.
Although fans of “The Bad Guys,” especially the younger ones who will be introduced to the idea of recidivism for the very first time, are likely to forgive this film for air-balling its themes, it’s also fair to take this sequel to task. After all, they’re the ones who decided to make an offbeat animal heist movie about a difficult and serious topic. That’s on them. If they can’t make the most of their own themes, that’s on them too. And if the movie isn’t quite funny enough to distract from those flaws — and gosh darned it, it isn’t — that’s all there is to it. It’s not bad, guys. But guys, it’s not good.
“The Bad Guys 2” opens exclusively in theaters on Aug. 1.