The Bad Guys 2 review: A silly yet entertaining crime caper
The first instalment in The Bad Guys totally passed me by in 2022. I was pleasantly surprised by it when I recently caught up and I’m pleased to report that the sequel, The Bad Guys 2, is even better.
A quick refresher: The Bad Guys are a band of thieves led by Mr. Wolf (voiced by Sam Rockwell). There’s the safecracker Mr. Snake (Marc Maron), the master of disguise Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson), the muscle Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos) and expert hacker Ms. Tarantula/Webs (Awkwafina). The first film ended with the team discovering that they actually liked being good.
Now onto the sequel: After serving time in prison, The Bad Guys are trying to live life on the straight and narrow but nobody trusts them and they can’t get hired for regular jobs. When heists start being carried out by a mysterious new bandit using their techniques, The Bad Guys offer to help the police track down and identify the new thief. This is how they meet a new all-female criminal crew featuring Kitty Kat (Danielle Brooks), Doom (Natasha Lyonne) and Pigtail Petrova (Maria Bakalova), who force them to do one last heist.
The Bad Guys 2 is a genuinely funny heist comedy with stellar voice actors that give our favourite thieves so much pizzazz and personality, especially Rockwell as the most charismatic wolf ever put to screen. The script is littered with pop culture references (Whatipedia and “I see guilty people” to name a few) and spectacularly animated action scenes (the animation style is excellent overall). These are accompanied by a foot-tapping score from Daniel Pemberton and top-notch needle drops.
However, the story is a bit on the silly side and doesn’t make a ton of sense, and I couldn’t help but think that there probably wasn’t enough to substantiate a sequel. While I wasn’t super invested in the story, and felt the narrative quality dipped in the second half, I still had a really great time because it was easy to get swept up in the fun on the surface. And there was a lot of fun to be had!
The Bad Guys 2 is a rare animated sequel that’s better than its predecessor. This one is definitely worth a family cinema trip this summer holiday!
In cinemas now