There should be a word in German for that thing where a movie makes a joke ridiculing some offence the film itself is currently committing. “We know! So don’t nag us. Okay?”
There has rarely been a more egregious example than that found at the centre of this tolerable sequel to a modestly successful 2022 animation. The titular troupe of anthropomorphic grifters realise that a set of recent robberies hinge on desire for a magical substance called McGuffinite. If you didn’t get that, the material is named for the device in a Hitchcock film that serves merely as an accelerant for the plot. The mysterious wine bottle in Notorious. That sort of thing.
The Bad Guys 2, though big on zany visuals of the Hanna Barbera school, is dragged down by an overcomplicated plot about which it becomes increasingly hard to give a hoot. Mr Wolf, Mr Snake, Mr Shark and the rest, after saving the world in the first film, have now settled down to the boring straight existence. The former crooks are, to paraphrase the last lines of Goodfellas, learning to live the rest of their lives like a schnook. Crummy jobs. Cheap cars. No action.
Life heats up when a party of female animals, led by a snow leopard named Kitty Kat, carry out a series of robberies that are blamed on our Bad Guys. Cross and double cross eventually send everyone into space for what wants to be a spectacular denouement. Who is friend? Who is foe? Who really cares?
None of which is to suggest there isn’t uncomplicated fun to be had here. Pierre Perifel, the French director of both films, seems to have enjoyed his Saturday-morning cartoons as a child. The clamorous, body-twisting set pieces sit somewhere between the ballet of Looney Tunes and the less sophisticated visual blare of Scooby Doo.
Nothing wrong with any of that. But one remains puzzled as to what these films want to be. Not nearly enough is done with the animal natures of the heroes. Mr Wolf, voiced by Sam Rockwell, may have big teeth (Grandma), but, the odd growl aside, he does little that George Clooney didn’t to in the Oceans films. In contrast, far too much is done with that increasingly unwieldy plot. If you keep yakking about the McGuffin the audience will worry if they should genuinely care about it. That isn’t happening here.
In cinemas from July 25th
