The Bad Guys (2022) – 3/5

The boys are back in town

„The Bad Guys“ is an American English-language film from 2022, so really new and fresh still and this one runs for approximately 100 minutes, which makes it neither a super long nor super short (animated) movie. It is a DreamWorks production and so it should surprise nobody really that the man in charge behind the camera is Pierre Perifel as he has worked in minor positions on previous releases there, especially the Kung Fu Panda films. He is from France, but this one here is of course not a French film as I stated earlier already. Perichel did a good job overall, but also got help from an experienced writing squad that he himself was not part of here. Etan Cohen has worked on more live action films, but is also not new to animation. Yoni Brenner with his body of work is exactly the man you’d expect to be a part of such a project and Aaron Blabey is the kinda opposite, namely an experienced and prolific actor in the 1990s and first half of the 2000s, but then he apparently switched to writing books and these became successful enough to be turned into movies and this is the first of his books that got adapted for the screen here, but apparently not his last. The next is already on the way. And there is a short film too linked to this one here. Pretty interesting career. Highly unusual. As for the voice cast we have here, the big name is of course Oscar winner Sam Rockwell voicing the wolf at the center of the story. Good choice. Rockwell is a bit of a wolf himself. Or some of the other characters he played are. The other names are not super famous, but still good enough. Craig Robinson always make for a nice inclusion and Awkwafina voicing a spider is not too shabby either. But I think no matter if you watch the original or a dub in your native language (if that is not English too), then you should be fine in the long run. Voice acting is on a really high level these days, especially with high-profile releases like this one here. Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks and the rest are getting it done.

Robinson by the way lent his voice to the shark in here and he was maybe my favorite character. Always funny when he was on really. My least favorite and least memorable of the gang was probably the piranha. Maybe because basically turning anything meaty into a skeleton was not really easy to combine with the character here and that he despite his size simply was able to beat up everybody was just so-so. Maybe for me he lost already with the farting-when-anxious joke when the character got introduced to us. But let’s focus on the positive too. All around, I was nicely entertained. This film with its focus on villain characters reminded me of a mix between the Ocean’s films, Despicable Me, maybe with an ounce of Suicide Squad. We have five animals at the center of it all here, a group of creatures that people usually do not like, like wolves, snakes, spiders, piranhas and sharks. They also all have their fair share of horror films to them you could say. But still it is really all about the comedy here of course. At the start we get an introduction during which we see that the wolf and the snake are close buddies and that the snake cannot stand birthdays. I am not sure if I liked the kinda emotional elaboration on why it is this way a little later, but it was okay. It was also funny to see how everybody was scared of these animals and how they did not have to pay their bills as a consequence. So it was maybe this lack of appreciation too that turned them into a bit of a group of outlaws as they robbed banks etc. But it was not just the main plot that stayed in the mind, but also these small moments linked to the animals where their beast came through if you wanna say it like that like the biggest joke and a recurring one even with the wolf was fawning. And on one occasion, even the other animals were fawning despite not really having tails. That was hilarious. As for the wolf, I also liked the final moment how he was always in control and planted the ice for the snake.

But I also liked the shark (a bit of a Hulk character, really peaceful, but ready for unspeakable acts when angry) and how he ended up swallowing other characters. Without harming them at all of course. The poison aspect they left out with the spider because it would have been too much maybe, but instead she is an IT genius. The snake gets a few cool moments though, like how he randomly sheds. Is that the right word? Loses its skin I mean. Fun inclusion. Or also his reaction when he hears about guinea-pigs. How the snake instinct in him came through there and he is making these typical snake sounds because he really wants to kill it and eat it. Nature at it again. The consequence is that we do have a guinea-pig at the center of the plot as well. Early on, I thought that this guinea-pig, a do-gooder in this society, could turn out the bad guy, but then later on I felt like it is not going to happen, but in the end, it really did and they showed us how the allegedly evil animals were not the bad ones, but the cuty fluffy one was indeed really sinister. He got arrested in the end too. Not for something he did, but they had to find some kind of punishment for his ruthless acts I guess. I own(ed) guinea-pigs myself, so I was not super happy about these twists, but hey I could accept them. Then there was also a gigantic meteor in the shape of a heart that plays a big role and once again we get the evidence there that looks can be deceiving. It had to be destroyed. No matter what it looks like, it’s still highly dangerous.

Oh and there is a fox as well. I will get to her in a second. So yeah, there are humans in here, but they add nothing to the story and were only used for jokes almost you could say, like how they are scared of the title characters as I mentioned earlier. The fox is very much the biggest female character, even bigger than the spider although she belongs to the gang from the start. That revelation that the foxy lady (Dianne Feinstein anybody?) was indeed a master criminal once as well I did not really see coming during the watch, but I guess on rewatch there are some implications for that. So she is a bit of the film’s conscience you could say: a bad guy (no, girl) that changed to the good side and now makes an impact. I mean they even got a climate change reference in there briefly I think. Whatever. Said fox has not forgotten about any of her skills and manages to help the bad guys in the end when they are about to be punished for something they didn’t do. That was fine too. And in the sense of political correctness, they even have to go to jail for what they did. Decide to do so themselves. The message to kids in the audience must be right: If you did something bad, you have to live with the consequences and accept the sentence. Oh actually wait, there is a bigger human character in here I think: the policewoman. She is pretty rough and strong and not willing to be fooled by the bad guys again and again, even if she is not as evil as she initially seems. Could have been the main antagonist too, but as the film progresses, she is just a professional. In the German version, she was voiced by Gisa Flake. Fitting pick I’d say. If you come from my country and know her, you will know what I mean. What else can be added? Oh yes, there is towards the end a huge avalanche of guinea-pigs, somewhat controlled by the bad guy now with their evil eyes and that was pretty hilarious. Also how massive it was. It was basically the sand snake from Dune that consisted of guinea-pigs. Epic stuff really. How it was changing shapes too and turned into some giant arm/fist trying to smash the bad guys into pieces. Wooow.

As for those title characters, it was still nice how they stayed friends and stuck together and overcame their issues. I do not necessarily mean only the big conflict towards the end, but also for example these birthday party photos early on from the fridge. How we see that nobody outside their circle really liked them, but they have each other and help each other in having a good time. That was kinda sweet. I am not sure if this film was a commercial success really, but I hope it was at least to the level where they consider making a sequel. Of course, you have stuff like fox characters acting like humans in other projects too like Zootopia (there a witty guy, here a witty girl) or from the same movie also a seemingly innocent animal character turning into the main villain, but I still think this film here had enough to offer in terms of new creative aspects to be called a success on its own. I never doubted that I would give this one a thumbs-up and positive recommendation overall during the watch. The duration felt fine too, not too long and not too short. Also, animated guinea-pigs are a rarity, so this should be reason enough to follow-up. I do not even want to think about the amount of poop this avalanche creates over the course of a day or week or even longer. And visually, it is a really good film too. We sometimes take that for granted with new animated movies these days, but we shouldn’t. Instead, appreciate it anew. The level is insanely high. I have to dig deep here for stuff I did not like and that was also mostly only stuff that was not bad, but just not on par with the better aspects. One example would be the piranha, another would be the journalist showing up on several occasions. The good was soo much more frequent though, be it how the guinea-pig inside the car stages being attacked by the wolf in front of everybody or a really cool literal depiction of a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Funniest moment of them all. This film is a prime example of why grown-ups who think animation is just for kids could not be any more wrong. Do not miss out! I surely recommend the watch here. This is a truly creative movie with some very nice attention to detail. Positively recommended and I hope the Oscars will remember it during the upcoming awards season.