Director: Michael Bay
Cast: Martin Lawrence (absolutely mystified that he kept top billing going into the sequel; will this keep up with Bad Boys For Life? [2020]?), Will Smith, Gabrielle Union, Jordi Mollà
Have I Seen It Before?: I have a vague memory of watching the first fifteen minutes of it on DVD at some point, but being bored by it. Is that even possible?
Did I like it?: A little less than the original Bad Boys (1995), and I’m left a little uncertain as to how to quantify that difference. Michael Bay is in fine form, eschewing the complete void of human interest that has become his later career. He really should just make clones of Lethal Weapon (1987) and leave the robots to… Well, no one, now that I think about it.
Smith and Lawrence continue to effortlessly offer the one non-negotiable element for buddy cop movies: chemistry. Each are plenty charming on their own (although one may have more of a continuous record at the box office) but together their so imminently watchable that it isn’t a completely ridiculous notion that the two will come back together for a third film next year.
The movie is shamelessly what it is, for better or worse. So why doesn’t this one work as well as the previous film? Am I just wrong? A possibility. The film reached several worst-of lists in the year of its release. However, it does have a cultural reach that eclipses the original, although that may be more related to its being lionized in Hot Fuzz (2007).
It’s more difficult to quantify something so subjective at first blush, but if I had to pick one element that sinks or swims plenty of movies. The score here is produced by a different composer, and I really prefer the score in the first movie. It might be reductive to be down on a movie for one single element, but just try to watch films like Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999), or better yet, Halloween (1978) without the music. Both films become equally unwatchable, which is simply unfathomable given how both of those movies turned out. Music counts, folks.