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Review
by Peter Lynn The original Bad Boys was nothing special. It was a pretty typical buddy action-comedy, with one interesting novelty: not one, but both leading men were black. Since its 1995 release, both Martin Lawrence and Will Smith have gone on to become huge mega-stars. (Or at least so one thinks initially. In fact, Lawrence's most impressive subsequent showing involved donning a fat suit to become both an old lady and a poor-man's Eddie Murphy in Big Momma's House. Smith, on the other hand, has become such a fantastically enormous star that his reflected glory somehow makes Lawrence seem here like an A-list Hollywood player in his own right. Neat trick.) So, despite its arrival eight years after we reasonably ought to care about a Bad Boys sequel, Bad Boys II is such an obviously golden opportunity for everybody involved to rake in Hefty bags full of cash they'd be morons not to take it. Bad Boys II (originally titled Bad Around the World, which I'm not touching) reintroduces us to the duo of Mike (Smith) and Marcus (Lawrence), two federal agents with unorthodox yet successful crime-fighting techniques. It also reacquaints me with the same problems I had with the first film — namely, that I can buy the athletic and intelligent Smith as a federal agent, but can't seem to allow myself the same suspension of disbelief for the out-of-shape, idiotic-sounding Lawrence. National Security, Lawrence's latest effort, had the cinematic irritant cast as a minimum wage-earning night watchman — a role that didn't require much imagination on the part of the audience. A much more difficult task, however, is attempting to picture Lawrence (who's shown up on the news several times with more drugs in him than Amsterdam's red light district) as a highly-trained narcotics agent. I have trouble imagining Lawrence possessing the mental stability to successfully keep down a job as a garbage man; asking me to believe he's somehow climbed to the apex of a top-tier tactical narcotics squad is akin to thinking it would be smart to pay Tom Arnold in amphetamines to babysit your kids. In the event of a sudden nationwide shortage of freebase drugs, it's a safe bet you could melt either of the two comedians down into pure crack cocaine for emergency use. The first words of the trailer immediately place Bad Boys II in its Bush-era context. "Since 9/11 we've gone high-tech over the water," explains Henry Rollins, "so the dope runners have gone below." A roomful of drug enforcement agents listen on, most likely wondering what bad life choices they've made up until now that have led to having to take orders from Henry Rollins. We then cut to shots of helicopters (above the water), freighters (on the water), and commando-types with night-vision goggles (emerging out of water), confirming Rollins' assessment. At this point, it's obvious Bad Boys II is going to be long on star power (and, presumably, water), but a little short on logic. Why should 9/11 change the way the war on drugs is fought, as opposed to the war on terrorism? Is the film suggesting that dope runners have fleets of submarines now? What'd they build them out of, drugs? And how did Henry Rollins get into drug enforcement? Did Lawrence vouch for him? The film takes great pains to separate Smith and Lawrence's agency from real-life drug enforcement agency DEA — most likely at the behest of the DEA — and the results are unintentionally hilarious. A crew-cut-wearing Joe Pantoliano establishes that Smith and Lawrence work for T.N.T., or "Tactical! Narcotics! Team!" as he shouts while circling the words on a whiteboard for their benefit. First off, I can't imagine any criminal taking a federal agency with such a ridiculous-sounding nickname seriously. They might as well call themselves A.C.T.I.O.N. Kick-Force! and drive around in a van with George Peppard. Secondly, while the scene helps get some exposition out of the way for the audience, it makes for a fairly intelligence-insulting moment once you insert it into everyday life. Imagine if you worked at Microsoft, and when you showed up every morning Bill Gates walked out of his office, wrote Microsoft on the wall, and yelled "You work at Microsoft!" at you.
"Somebody shot you?" queries Smith, gazing into Lawrence's buttocks. "That who be you!" responds an agitated Lawrence. The injury may be more serious than it appears, since the bullet apparently entered his buttocks, bounced upward through the abdomen and neck, and tore into the left front lobe of his brain, thus damaging his ability to properly conjugate the verb "to be." The trailer sort of stumbles along from there, with explosions and car chases and more two-fisted shootouts. At one point, in keeping with the rules of Hollywood gunplay, Lawrence shoots a car and it literally flies about thirty feet in the air (that's some bullet). Is there a story here? It's a Jerry Bruckheimer summer blockbuster. Does it need one? It's got Will Smith. It's got comedy. It's got action. It's even got an a cappella version of Inner Circle's theme to COPS, courtesy of our leads. And yes, it's got Martin Lawrence. Some of you like that. Some of you don't. Fine, but remember this: rumor has it that the first Bad Boys was originally written with Jon Lovitz and Dana Carvey in mind for the leading roles. Given the horror of their recent unfunniness in Rat Race and Master of Disguise, the prospect of spending an hour-and-a-half with Martin Lawrence should have you shouting both "Well, isn't that special?" and "That's the ticket!"
RATING:
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Oh
my god! They actually made a sequel to this? was my immediate
reaction after a first viewing of the trailer to Bad Boys II. Then after
a moment: My god! How have they not already made a sequel
to this?
Contrary
to Webster's, Pantoliano's definition of "tactical" includes
the words "discrete," "finesse," and "subtlety,"
which causes Smith and Lawrence to trade confused looks, since there's
nothing "tactical" whatsoever about Lawrence's bug-eyed brand
of comedy. A
good example of this comes during a firefight, when a diving Smith fires
his guns into the buttocks of Lawrence, who gives us his best pop-eyed
reaction shot. (I can hear director Michael Bay now: "Okay, Marty, you're
giving me pain and shock. I want you to give me 'exophthalmic.' "
Then he'd just film the face Lawrence made while trying to figure out
that word.)