*** Official BAD BOYS II Review Thread (1 Viewer)

Babes, bombs, and guns: the bad boys are back. The film is a mess as the action sequences are piled one onto another, but in the end, it's not so bad. The laughs are few and far between, there is more exposure to dead bodies and gore here than in Pearl Harbor, and director Michael Bay and former football star Dan Marino make hilarious cameos
. If you aren't a fan of Michael Bay films, your brain should have told you already not to see it. However, if you enjoyed the original Bad Boys and Armageddon, Bad Boys II should be right up your alley.

:star::star:1/2 out of :star::star::star::star:

Uh oh. A thread about a Michael Bay film. This should get nasty pretty quick.

Quick notes (no time - or motivation - for a full review): Amazing action sequences but fairly lame comedy (just like the first one!). Incredibly gory for a "comedy", so look out. Completely over-the-top -- almost less believable than Armageddon. Almost. Goes on F...O...R...E...V...E...R. Two and a half hours is an hour or so too long for a movie with this little story. Don't drink a lot of fluids before sitting down to watch it.

Last thing: Not for the easily (or even moderately easily) offended. The filmmakers have some serious lack-of-taste issues. I enjoy good scatalogical and/or dark humor as much as the next guy but some of the stuff in this movie just goes waaaaaayyyyyyy too far. I felt dirty after watching it but have to admit I can't say I didn't enjoy the action.

Overall: Great action. Some of the coolest chases/shootouts of the summer. Not as bad as Pearl Harbor or Armageddon. Not as good as The Rock.
:star: :star: :star:

Eh. It was OK. After reading some pre-discussion I was expecting this to be as bad as Charlies Angels 2 (which I rank in my top 5 worst films ever). It was alright, not great, in fact story wise pretty weak. But the action kept me entertained, the humor was good overall (I liked the humor in Bad Boys) but totally agree with the above about some of it going a little far. (Although I think he was talking more about the humor in the necro
stuff...)

I'm not a guy that's easily offended, but the "N" word use in the first scenes was extraneous and unnecessary. Personally, I'm not offended by racial humor -- Joking about other cultures/stereotypes has always been used in friendship bonding. For someone to call me "cracker" or make fun of the way I play or whatever, doesn't bug me when I'm messing with buddies, it's just play. Stranger on the side of the road is using it to offend and spread hate -- I'll stop now before I turn this into a racial rant or anything, I just wanted to clarify that I was offended by the use of the "N" word. I mean c'mon, the Klan as Xtasy dealers?


Won't buy it on DVD, but I didn't feel like I'd wasted 2hrs of my life like with Charlies Angels 2. The action alone (although ludicrous) was enough.

Doug

This is the worst film Michael Bay has ever made. And that's really saying something considering that his last movie used a real instance of mass death as basis for the world's longest tampon commercial. Bad Boys II is racist, homophobic, hateful, unexciting, and seemingly endless. It's hard to pick which scene of this ideologically offensive sequel is the worst.

Mark

Bad Boys 2 :star: out of 5

I once spent about three hours with an oral surgeon as he extracted, root-canalled, and drilled through the largest hole in my face. It was a very painful experience, but in the back of my weeping brain I kept remembering "this horrible experience serves a very worthwhile purpose." Bad Boys 2 is a whole lot like that torturous afternoon, only there's no good purpose to be found. It's long, lumbering, ugly and altogether sickening.

I'd contend that Michael Bay's initial Bad Boys was a semi-stylish and somewhat kinetic retread of that tired old Buddy Cop schpiel. Entirely forgettable, but certainly diverting and entertaining in certain spots.

The sequel on the other hand, is a gaping maw of hate, a stunningly inept and venomous piece of crap that treats its audience like shit and does so for well over two hours. Forget that the movie has no cohesion, no logic, no pacing and no entertainment value whatsoever. What's most enlightening about Bad Boys 2 is this: you'll never see a better example of filmmakers' contempt for their audience.

Mindless popcorn flicks can be thrilling indeed; heck, I swallowed my pride and loudly admitted that my pre-conceived notions of Pirates of the Caribbean were entirely wrong. But Bad Boys 2 presents a distasteful presentation of dreck that drones on endlessly, joylessly, insultingly...just pick an adverb here. They all fit.

A thug at a bar would probably sock you in the jaw once and then walk away; producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay would be thrilled to beat you to death until you were nothing more than a bloody stump holding a ticket stub.

I'd go into the "plot" at this point, though it's nothing more than your ridiculously typical 'cops chase drug merchants' bullshit so I won't insult your intelligence by implying that Bad Boys 2 has anything fresh or exciting to offer you. The big action scenes arrive with a dreary reliability, although each of them are presented in amazingly woeful fashion. As someone who's staunchly defended Michael Bay's work in the past (mainly just The Rock and Armageddon) I found myself regretting that support after less than 15 minutes of Bad Boys 2 had unspooled. Most directors seem to evolve as they make each progressive feature; Michael Bay is content to devolve and collect his paycheck - and that's just pathetic.

It's well-documented that both Will Smith and Martin Lawrence weren't all that interested in doing a Bad Boys sequel, each actor hoping to expand their horizons past cookie-cutter sequelism. I suppose it was the meager box office showing of Will Smith's Ali (and Lawrence's string of awfulness which includes the likes of National Security and Black Knight) that predicated the contracts, and the insincerity of the end product oozes through every unseemly pore.

What's most galling is that the filmmakers apparently felt the NEED to make this bloated abortion run well over two hours and fifteen minutes...as if they actually have something to SAY. But all I saw (in between the zoom-lens action lunacy) was an unending parade of flimsy race gags, prissy movie-star mugging, grotesque homophobia, a distasteful devotion to rampant misogyny, and the insufferable air of smug moviemakers slapping something together for a Big Summertime Opening Weekend.

Never before has Contempt for the Audience been so astonishingly evident:

--Naked corpses being leered at for sexual gratification. Fun.

--More corpses tossed onto the highway during a car chase. Stupid AND plagiarized from Adam Rifkin's The Chase! And you just know that Bay was right off-camera shrieking "NO! I want the corpse's head to ROLL OFF when the car goes over it! THAT'S what my audience wants!"

--A 15-year-old boy threatened with a handgun as he's offered anal sex from the movie's hero. (WHAAAAA???)

--Two rats screwing in an attic as Bay's camera lingers on what he's sure is a brilliantly conceived sight gag!

--An entire hillside village of Cubans are wiped out just so our heroes can poke fun at the carnage.

--A series of painfully contrived "Three's Company" gags in a video store that are frankly some of the worst jokes I've ever heard in a film.

The list goes on and on, and I've spent more than enough time on a film that I'd simply love to forget all about. I can't remember the last time a big-budget action flick felt like this much of a punishment, but there you go. Bad Boys 2 represents everything that's wrong with Hollywood and the Sequel Machine, and it does so with a precision that almost seems intentional. As in: "Hey, let's see how BAD we can actually make this movie and still gross $100 million!!"

There's simply no other explanation.

Glad that Mikey and Jerry and Willy and Marty all got their big guaranteed paychecks on this one. Good job, fellas. Nice to know what you really think of the moviegoing public.

This was basically 3 short films mashed together, and strung along by a very thin thread.

I wasn't as offended by the racial angles/liberties that showed up in the film. Actually, I laughed along with the crowd because at the core, there was enough humor in those scenes to elicit the laughs.

There is quite a bit of gross humor and situations, with a no-hold-barred attitude in the direction (or the writing, for that matter). The language is at times raw (but that doesn't bother me one bit either). There are about 3 really funny side-splitting scenes that just about make it worth the price of a matinee showing. The stunts are gratitious and fast-paced, with nary a semblence of real danger to the main guys, Marcus and Mike. Does that undermine this kind of film, nah, it's just about what I expected in this roller coaster of a movie.

The audience I attended had an awfully good time with the film, and I think it'll get good word of mouth (even if critics slag it).

I give it 2.75 stars, or a grade of B-.

Overall, a poorer film than the first, but not unentertaining.

In short, the movie is loaded with barely supported scenes that are just an excuse for a moderately comic scene or an over the top action scene. In that sense, it can be somewhat fun because they never even try to make an excuse for a story. There were a couple of potentially excellent action scenes that are cheapened a bit by Bay's frenetic camerawork and editing. The street battle could have been as good as similar battles in Heat, but it is relegated to throwaway status.

The banter isn't up to the fun caliber of the first, but there are a few highlights to make up for the ones that fall flat. The section with one partner under the influence springs to mind.

The action sequences are loud, nonstop, and flashy, so they can be fun to watch as spectacle. The ending is so over the top that it successfully surpasses the conclusion of the previous record holder, Bruckheimer's ConAir. Even funnier, they have some braindead version of the establishment of the Fellowship of the Ring just before it. The film is also very curiously gory. I can't quite understand why they took such and angle, but they may have created a new genre, splatter action movie.

In total, not nearly the crime against humanity that LXG was, but nowhere near the satisfying summer film as Pirates of the Caribbean or even Terminator 3. The movie is rather ridiculous in nature, would envy an episode of Saved by the Bell for plot development and character motivation, and requires zero brain power (they even flash back to a scene earlier in the film when they reintroduce a character just in case you forgot). Knowing that the film is just a series of action vignettes and an excuse to use corpses for comic effect, you may have some fun.

:star: :star: (out of four)

This whole thread is in denial!

"I give it 1 star, but hmm, I really did enjoy it, not the best movie ever, but it was entertaining." BLAH!

This movie is EXACTLY the kind of movie I was looking for this summer. Action sequences were incredible (try shooting that Hummer scene more than once!), camera work was well done (I am probably in the minority here because I actually LOVE what Bay does...flame suit on!) and it was 2.5 hours of pure entertainment for me. No looking at my watch, no squirming, just pure entertainment.

Michael Bay and Jerry Bruckheimer did a great job plugging, "FULL BLOWN RATED R" for this movie. No one should be surprised about the gore in this one. Finally, Bay goes back to his original Bad Boy and The Rock roots with his style, although BB2 doesn't topple my favorite Bay film...The Rock.

4 out of 5 for me here.

P.S. What did you all think of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre trailer? Did you freak out when you saw "producer Michael Bay"?

Bad Boys II C+

This won't make sense but I enjoyed the movie but I did not like it overall. The C+ is a generous rating in my book. I think of this movie as some of the DVD's I have. I didn't necessarily like the movie but it had some really good scenes in the movie that would make it a great Demo Disk. Take Pearl Harbor for example, I hated the movie but I bought the DVD for Chapter 21-29 and that's it. To me BB2 is a compilation of over the top and sometimes great action sequences. In addition it had some great laughs, though some were uncomfortable due to the nature of what they made fun of.

So many things could have been left out. Because Bay and Bruckheimer must have been going for the immature teen audience this movie would have been even better if it came out in the fall. Rats humping each other, dead corpse falling out of a van and getting run over, jokes of a sexual nature concerning a dead corpse breast, etc. Just weren't needed IMO. To me things like that just took so much away from the film. I was cool with the racial humor, but I see how some would be offended. That's one of those things where it might be meant more for a certain demographic of the audience. Say for instance a white person were to have attend a comedy show by Martin Lawrence, Steve Harvey or Bernie Mac I would understand some of the uneasiness of racial jokes made.

Lastly, I know I'm supposed to go to movies for entertainment and let reality set free. But I get a little hung up about all the crazy stuff they did, like turning a city street into a war zone like what we see in Israel keeps me saying this is a bunch of BS. I can't let go of the fact that a cop can do all this over the top stuff and the only repercussions are the captain saying "the chief is really pissed."

Like I said the grade is very generous but even though the storyline sucked and it was unimaginably over the top, I liked the action and comedic parts even though they didn't really go together.

BTW PQ wise this is absolutely the best film I've ever seen. Before this I thought that some High Def transfers on SHO-HD, HBO-HD or whatever, rivaled or looked better than the film I see in the movie theater. The film was perfect, it looked so good I was a little bit distracted, but then the hot chicks in the night club got my attention.

I enjoyed it. Much better than the first.

I'll leave it at that because I do not want the movie snobs to jump on the Michael Bay bashing bandwagon.

"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

That pretty much sums up my feelings for this piece of crap.

:star: out of :star::star::star::star::star:

Films like "Bad Boys 2" scare me, frighten me...they nearly want me to incur punitive damages on the filmmakers for brutally beating my senses, well, senseless. But let me back up for a second...there's not really quite like a movie like "Bad Boys 2", a stunning parade of awfulness that spares no expense at humiliating a paid audience into 146 minutes of the worst action cinema I think I've ever seen.

Yes, campers, we're in Michael Bay's world, a world where nothing slows down and everyone is racist, bigoted and homophobic. A world where you can't have a simple establishing shot of a scene, when instead you can have half-a-dozen different angles of a building. A world where two brash, loud, annoying cops named Marcus and Mike (played by Will Smith and Martin Lawrence) can wreak havoc on everyone and not worry about innocent bystanders. A world where Paul Walker's cop Brian in those "Fast and The Furious" movies would be right at home. (And hey, that film's sequel took place in Miami; how's that for irony?)

Who the hell thought up this garbage? Marcus and Mike are "back" to stop a massive ecstacy kingpin run by Evil Russian With Bad Hair...in other words, in Scooby Doo terms, Fred (Smith) the good looking mystery solver comes across clues and reports them with stunning precision, while Shaggy (Lawrence) gets scared at the right moments and gets sick when necessary. There's no Velma or Betty here, but Gabrielle Union, in her 45th movie this year, plays some undercover agent (who also happens to be the girlfriend of Mike and the sister of Marcus) who looks absolutely stunning in a bikini...again.

Still, people who plunk down Raising Ticket Prices to see this movie don't want plot or characters to care about, but you know what? Even the film's action sequences are incredibly awful. There's hardly any sense of action here, rather a barrage of flying cars, countless rounds of ammunition and, well, more countless rounds of ammunition, all within massively edited timing so we never really get a good look at anything. Here's a movie where its fans will be discussing if "Car Chase #3" or "Car Chase #5" was better.

Inbetween the scenes of mayhem, we have awkward moments of bonding between the two moronic cops, who pretty much stand around looking good while trying to solve the case. One scene, however, stands out, with Marcus and Mike meeting a young 15 year old boy who is taking out Marcus' daughter. For no reason whatsoever, instead of being kind to the nice looking boy, Bay chooses to have the boy humiliated and emotionally harassed at Marcus' front door, and it's NOT funny. Like the rest of the film, it made me feel uneasy and offended.

And to think I enjoy the talents of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, two talented performers. Smith has made me laugh in the occasional film, and he was the driving force behind his much-succesful "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" series. Words fail me as I watch Smith in this movie, a performer who is known for good comic timing and little-to-no use of coarse language, and is lowered to using the disastarous "N" word that even he looks scared to use. And I'm a big fan of Martin Lawrence, but here he's just boring to watch, quite annoying in a wholly unfunny sequence where he takes a certain pill by accident.

I don't know who this film was made for; at a whopping, endless 146 minutes, it is not the length for fans of vicious mayhem with no redeeming qualties. I already had my fill after the first reel, and afterwards I was literally in pain. A headache occured followed by some slight dizziness. And I was sitting in the back row of the theater.

Jason

Note: This movie is rated "R", which initially excited me because of the trend these past few years to hack and edit everything down to a PG-13 rating...this film pushes to the extreme of the "R" rating, and none of the bloody shootings, decapatations, naked corpses or endless profanity interested me whatsoever.

I liked this film better than the first one and laughed out loud throughout the film. I can see why this film isn't for everyones taste, but I had an entertaining time with it. Nothing about the film was realistic, but I didn't expect it to be going in which helped me accept the film as little more than a live cartoon.





Crawdaddy

I love my share of violent, brainless action movies but this movie has no plot whatsoever. It was beyond dumb. To sum this movie up in one sentence.....

Action, forced dialogue trying to be funny (failing most of the time), action, forced dialogue trying to be funny, action, obligatory slo-mo shot circling around the main characters, forced dialogue trying to be funny, action, forced dialogue trying to be funny...the end. 2 1/2 hours of this was enough to make me not want to see action movies again for awhile and this coming from an action junkie.

I thought the Bad Boys 2 freeway chase could possibly be better than both T3 and the Matrix chase scenes but I should have known better with Michael Bay's style. The best shot of the whole chase was in the trailer with the shot of the ferrari swerving to avoid another car tumbling towards them. I thought there was going to be some inventive camera work but Michael Bay loves to edit everything into half-second shots with the camera panned in so close you can't tell what the hell is going on half the time. Throw in some forced, re-hashed banter from Smith and Lawrence and that's pretty much it.

And that chase through the village was ripped straight out of Jackie Chan's Police Force and not done even half as good.

First Men in Black 2 and now Bad Boys 2. Here's hoping Will Smith strikes gold in 'I, Robot' and 'Sharkslayer'.

:star: out of 4