The Bad Guys (2022)

June 25, 2022 8:50 PM

Several reformed yet misunderstood criminal animals attempt to become good, with some disastrous results along the way.
posted by SPrintF (7 comments total)

An enjoyable enough movie, especially during the "heist" bits. But it has some odd choices. The main characters are all anthropomorphic animals, but everyone else is human. There are other animals in the film, but none of them can talk. I would have expected more of a mix, as in Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers.

The other odd choice were the characters' eyes. Although 3D models were used throughout, the characters' eyes were all flat, 2D renderings, like decals applied to 3D faces. Strange.

Still, when the action is rolling, I found it very enjoyable with at least one interesting twist.
posted by SPrintF at 8:56 PM on June 25, 2022

My twin boys were incredibly excited by the trailer, but their attention drifted off once the reformatory aspect of the plot kicked into gear. “They’re supposed to be *bad* guys!” one of them complained. I asked them what they’d been hoping for and the description I got back was more like a G-rated anthropomorphised Michael Mann film, which… fair play, I’d like that, too.

But on a subsequent viewing they got more into it, and I have to admit the film’s visual language is great. It has this washed out colouring that shows the filmmakers are well versed in the genre of “LA heist,” and a lot of the more subtle 2D effects seen earlier in “Into the Spider-Verse” and “Mitchells vs. The Machines” are put to good use here too.

It’s not the greatest thing ever, but it’s pretty okay.
posted by MarchHare at 11:06 PM on June 25, 2022 [1 favorite]

My kids were huge fans of the books and really enjoyed the film. Definitely recommended if your kids liked the books.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 4:13 AM on June 26, 2022 [2 favorites]

Another small complaint: what's with the two fish? You've got one mammal, one reptile, one arachnid and two fish? Keep Shark, for sure, but maybe get a bird for the fifth Bad Guy (a vulture, perhaps)?
posted by SPrintF at 6:35 AM on June 26, 2022

Like EndsOfInvention, I have kids who loved both the books and the movie.

The kids were actually a bit thrown by the differences between the two -- to be fair, this might be their first experience of the "same" story across different media -- so I suspect I actually liked it more than they did.

The books (which now are up to 13 or so) go to some pretty interesting places, but I thought the movie gave both the characters and the world a lot more depth, while still highlighting some of the great (and hilarious) aspects of the books.

Corridor Crew recently had a bit about the animation -- CGI has opened up a lot of new animation styles, which in some cases works really well and in others falls pretty flat. This doesn't stand up to the best of them (granted, Into the Spider-Verse and Arcane have set a frankly ridiculous bar for anyone to follow here) but for me it worked much better than I expected going in.
posted by bjrubble at 5:14 PM on June 26, 2022

We went to see this with some friends at a drive-in theatre a couple of weeks ago. My kids had read some of the books the friends hadn't but when we saw them a couple of weeks later the younger one had a set of the books so I guess she liked it well enough. I didn't pay much attention to the movie myself because me and the friends' father were talking for the most part. I feel like if we were at a regular theatre and I had to pay attention to it then it would have been fairly enjoyable.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 11:55 AM on June 27, 2022

The seven-year-old was absolutely enthralled. She barely even narrated it to us as we watched with her.

The best laugh for us adults was the snake's look when the randomly generated number turned out to be 1-2-3-4-5.
posted by Etrigan at 4:46 PM on July 1, 2022