Marc Maron as Mr. Snake, left, Craig Robinson as Mr. Shark, Sam Rockwell as Mr. Wolf, Anthony Ramos as Mr. Piranha and Awkwafina as Ms. Tarantula in The Bad Guys 2.Photo Credit: Universal Pictures / DreamWorks Animation/Supplied
The Bad Guys 2
Directed by Pierre Perifel
Written by Yoni Brenner and Etan Cohen, based on the books by Aaron Blabey
Featuring the voices of Sam Rockwell, Marc Maron and Danielle Brooks
Classification G; 104 minutes
Opens in theatres Aug. 1
For the most part, there is no need for animated films to resort to celebrity stunt-casting. Do children really care that it is Chris Pratt voicing Garfield or that Rihanna is Smurfette? Do parents? So many kids films today seem to spend vast resources on securing familiar vocal talent (do the words “Zendaya as Meechee” mean anything to anyone?) instead of putting their money where it matters: story and design.
But not The Bad Guys.
Okay, the franchise, based on the books by Aaron Blabey, doesn’t entirely avoid such stunt-casting tricks. I’m not sure, for instance, how much the target audience really values the vocal work of Awkwafina as a cyber-hacker tarantula. Or Lilly Singh as a journalist named Tiffany Fluffit. But the movies do live and die based on the performance of Sam Rockwell as the lead antihero, Mr. Wolf.
The Oscar-winning actor, prior to his long-awaited breakthrough role in the 2017 drama Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, has long been one of the film and stage world’s most colourful (and underrated) performers. Thanks to his witchy mannerisms, his puppy-dog visage, and the wiry, idiosyncratic way he wraps his tongue around dialogue, Rockwell has spent decades perfecting a kind of debonair sense of danger. You’re never quite sure whether Rockwell wants to kiss you or kill you. And you’re pretty confident he hasn’t a clue, either.
Marc Maron as Mr. Snake and Natasha Lyonne as Doom.Photo Credit: Universal Pictures / DreamWorks Animation/Supplied
All of which makes the actor a perfect fit for Mr. Wolf, the leader of a group of so-called bad guy animals who, as it turns out, are actually quite good. After proving themselves in director Pierre Perifel’s first Bad Guys film in 2022, the zoo-ready rogues (a piranha, a snake, a shark, etc.) are back again in this outing, with the gang blackmailed into a heist by a group of, well, bad girls (a cat, a wild boar, and a raven, to be exact).
The story itself is fairly forgettable, with a large chunk of the plot seemingly cribbing the arc of the Fast & Furious franchise (including an almost beat-for-beat facsimile of the big Rome car chase that opens Fast X). And the script is just jammed with flat one-liners and too many fart gags to count.
But whenever Rockwell’s purr comes on, which is often given Mr. Wolf’s central role, the whole affair sings, uniting both children who are naturally entranced by the actor’s delivery and adults who get Oscar-calibre work in an otherwise forgettable kiddie flick.
