Opens Fri July 18 at a buttload of theaters.
Bad Boys II is loud, feeble-headed, formulaic, routinely unfunny, completely absurd, and abusive to cadavers. It is indefensible as a motion picture, and assured at least $150 million at the box office. It is the triumphant return of Michael Bay.
Specifically, it's a sequel to his 1995 mega-hit Bad Boys, which starred Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. Both stars return for the sequel, this time to do battle with a Cuban drug kingpin. The kingpin's drug of choice: Ecstasy, which is moved into Miami via disemboweled corpses, and which has the unfortunate tendency to cause its swallowers to twitch and foam from the mouth. The kingpin has worries beyond purity, however, for his Miami mansion is infested with rats, and his sizable loot is being nibbled away. Plus, his dream house in Cuba is nearly finished, which means soon he and his cash must depart--that is, if Smith and Lawrence don't riddle him with bullet holes first.
Riddle is indeed the right word here, for Smith and Lawrence's raison d'être in Bad Boys II appears to be to dispose of enemies with as many rounds as possible; from the very opening of the film, when the duo bring a swift end to a Ku Klux Klan meeting (shooting as many quips at the hicks as bullets), ridiculous amounts of firepower are expended. Why use two rounds to disable an opponent when you can use 50? Why shoot that bad guy when you can blow him 30 feet into the air? This is Michael Bay 101, and if Bad Boys II proves anything, it's that Bay's attempt at cinematic respectability was soundly ended with the horrendous Pearl Harbor. Bad Boys II is classic, trashy, inexcusable Bay. The Bay of The Rock and Armageddon.
And is that such a bad thing? Bad Boys II is a terrible picture, to be sure--but I have always had an inexplicable soft spot for Bay's excessive tendencies. Case in point: Halfway through Bad Boys II, there is the need for a simple establishing shot of a police surveillance van. Most directors would merely show us the van, maybe add in the sound of a cricket chirping, then quickly cut to its interior. But not Bay. No, he quickly dollies the camera in, then sends it sailing above the van and down through a vent in the roof, eventually landing on a close-up of a surveillance monitor. It is a completely unnecessary maneuver, a visual logorrhea--but such is Bay's modus operandi; speed, noise, and montage are the predominant tools in his toolbox, and he combines them to an often fascinating, if completely ridiculous, effect. A perfect example of this is the true centerpiece of Bad Boys II: a lengthy freeway chase involving an SUV, a semi loaded with cars, and Smith and Lawrence giving pursuit in a Jaguar. As Miami blurs past, cars tumble from the truck, bouncing and crashing on the pavement, colliding with other cars and exploding while heroes and villains exchange gunfire. It is the most absurd of scenarios, completely unthrilling and not really entertaining to watch, but an impressive feat nonetheless--the equivalent of cinematic masochism, with Bay pounding away at the audience's senses, turning us on with the sheer spectacle of it all. This is what Bay does best, and what he offers throughout Bad Boys II's bloated running time. He makes his audience kinky and the audience, for better or worse, takes the lashing.
