Overall Rating
  Awesome: 22.87%
Worth A Look: 7.17%
Average: 6.73%
Pretty Bad: 2.69%
Total Crap: 60.54%
8 reviews, 175 user ratings
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| Bad Boys 2 |
by Erik Childress
"One Of The Most (any 6 adjectives for hate) Movies I've Ever Seen!"
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About a week before the screening of Bad Boys II, I contracted a slight sunburn on my arm. Now, the laws of the human body will define what happens next. But, sitting through the sequel that reeks more of career resurrections than necessity made me rethink the laws of biology. It wasn't until after the screening was over, a full 140 minutes-plus of the most vile, reprehensible, repugnant, pointless, humorless, self-indulgent, new-adjective-creator-for-hate piece of corpse-laden excrement I've seen in a long time, did I begin to believe that I had not begun to peel, but had in fact concocted some sort of flesh-eating virus.In the opening moments of Bad Boys II, we're treated to an assembly line of Ecstasy, slo-mo bullet shots to the neck, A KKK rally and Henry Rollins. As Slim Pickens might have said, "a man could spend a pretty good week in Vegas with all that stuff." But even that city couldn't hold the amount of sin that Bad Boys II packs into its 147 minutes.
Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) and Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) are still partners; despite two throwaway moments suggesting that Burnett is so fed up with Mike that he's transferring. They're on the trail of a dirty, greasy drug dealer, played by Jordi Molla, who played a dirty, greasy drug dealer in Blow. This time the drug is the aforementioned Ecstasy, which allows director Michael Bay, moral crusader he is, to show the potential spastic pukey effects of the party drug in a rave sequence that makes the one in The Matrix Reloaded endurable by comparison. Just be thankful that Bay didn't decide to actually make the camera go through anyone's vagina on the dance floor.
Burnett's now got a baby sister to keep interrupting the plot. Sydney (Gabrielle Union) is actually involved as an undercover DEA officer on the same trail of their case, and involved with Lowrey unbeknownst to Marcus. Sydney is so deep, deep, deep, DEEP undercover that she has time to hang out with the pair mere minutes after being involved with the enemy; only to keep reminding everyone that she doesn't want her cover to be blown and how the DEA doesn't need the help of the Miami police, despite apparently only having about four members on the job. Oh God, why am I even bothering?
I thought of Seinfeld during the film for several reasons. (1) To put myself in a happy place from which hopefully I could never return. (2) One of the "street toughs" who robbed Elaine's armouir plays a cop. ("Do you want me to hurt you? Because if you like - I could hurt you.") No thanks, the movie is doing a fine job. (3) Elaine once asked if you could die from vomit; say actually stuck in a vomitorium for an extended period of time. 147 minutes anyone?
Why is he bringing up that running time? Action movies have been getting longer and longer. Terminator 2, Face/Off, Minority Report, even Bay's The Rock clocks in at around 140. But this is freakin' Bad Boys! It's your routine buddy cop movie. It isn't about ideas. It doesn't have a story. It's about an egomaniacal director letting the camera run on-and-on while the two stars trade the kind of unfunny, forced banter that would never be worthy of outtakes, a gag reel or deleted footage on the DVD. Actually, the gag reel needs to be rethought, but here are ten examples that could have been chopped, stepped on, thrown in the toilet, done business on and flushed to save the human race from ever experiencing it.
(1) Bay's cameo - Yeah, it's only 45 seconds long but it's the first thing that should go you Hitchcockian Jim Cameron wannabe. Unless it's you roasting in hell or commanding your spawn from the nether regions, I don't want to see it.
(2) Dan Marino's cameo - Why? I like Dan Marino, but why? Because it's in Miami? What does this have to do with Bad Boys? Was it a leftover celebrity cameo from screenwriter Ron Shelton's Hollywood Homicide? Unless it involves Snowflake the dolphin or him not winning a super bowl, what is there to see?
(3) The electronics store - The two cops can find no other place to watch a video tape except this public venue. Sex appears on the screen, upsetting several patrons who then watch as Mike & Marcus get caught in full Three's Company mode talking about the shot given to Marcus' ass. You fill in the holes.
(4) The domestic sequences - The family is never in danger. The film ain't about its characters. Why even give the greasy drug dealer an overweight daughter and a double-barrel packin' mama? Why are we even bothering with the family lunch and the number 5 scene? You ain't even in the league of Lethal Weapon.
(5) The daughter's date - Lawrence worries about his 15-year old daughter going out on her first date. So he comes to the door, verbally abuses the shy, cornrolled youngster and then Smith backs him up, pretending to be the drunk uncle, waves a gun in his face and then asks if he'd like to fuck guys.
(6) Rat sex - I kid you not. There is rat sex in this movie. Legs spread and thrust city. Bay reportedly went up to Columbia pictures chairwoman Amy Pascal and said "Amy, trust me, it's going to be funny. I found where I can train rats to fuck for $3,500!"' Apparently, he also found a way he can get sheep to pay $9 to see a movie.
(7) The racist jabs - Not only does the drug dealer keep referring to them as the two "BLLLAACCKKK" cops and his mother asking if Gabrielle Union is "a negro," but even fellow cops join in on the fun. Two Mexican cops talking to the two "BLLLAACCCKKKK" cops. Mexicans pick up relatives in the ocean. Blacks like fried chicken. Thanks a lot, movie. And thanks for the free sheets.
(8) The morgue sequence - Smith graphically searches for ecstasy within the innards of dead bodies in a scene that would make Wilford Brimley in The Thing puke. Lawrence threatens to puke so often that the audience almost succumbs until Bay's coup de grace of lingering on the silicone breasts of a dead female referred to as "the bimbo." Why? Cause she has big boobs? Cause she's dead WITH big boobs? At least Jessica Karr got the final credit on the cast list as "female corpse". Way to go, Jessica!
(9) The ecstasy sequence - Lawrence accidentally swallows two tabs of X and acts like an unfunny idiot. In other words, being himself.
(10) The Cuba Invasion - This is how the movie ends. I kid you not. We end up at Guantanamo Bay with Gabrielle Union telling the bad guy and the audience that she'll throw down her gun…"right by the LANDMINE!" In an amazing incoherence of unity, Lawrence's insistence on saving his sister is backed up by the entire Miami S.W.A.T., the DEA, a cousin who lives in Cuba and friends of the Captain who happen to be in the CIA. Oh yeah, and "they're spies."
With an editor clearly involved in Bay's world of keeping shots to a second and a quarter apiece, how could he not see the value in the chops? Wouldn't have done much but make the movie shorter, but any port in a shitstorm.
And speaking of chopping, Bad Boys II probably has the highest rate of severed limbs since Saving Private Ryan. Villains are chopped up, bazookas separate a few and watch out for that inconspicuous toy car. It's becoming increasing obvious that The Rock worked because of the quirky choices of its cast, because Bay can't shoot an action sequence to save his own limbs. I'd give a right arm if Bay was never allowed to direct again. This is a film that thinks its central chase involving dropping cars off an automobile transport is the pinnacle of originality and then has the audacity to rip off Jackie Chan's Police Story and, for good measure, Charlie Sheen's The Chase. Note to Bay: shaky close-ups does not a chase make. Not even one with Charlie Sheen.Seeing Bad Boys II at the critic's screening in Chicago was a lot like being in the audience watching Springtime for Hitler on opening night. At first, it's a torrential downpour of horrific detestation and then laughter so thick at how insanely preposterous it all gets. It's shocking that Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy didn't get credit, because there clearly was no script. The modicum of hatred this film creates is unfathomable. Try to resist the urge to punch Smith in the face the sixth time he yells out "WHOOOOOOOO!!!!!" during an action sequence. Maybe Bay can someday blame the film on misinformation he received from the CIA, granting himself permission without justification for the cinematic carnage he's declared on moviegoers everywhere.
 del.icio.us 
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=7988&reviewer=198
originally posted: 07/18/03 15:12:24
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USA
18-Jul-2003 (R)
DVD: 07-Sep-2004
UK
N/A
Australia
18-Sep-2003
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