Who's afraid of the big bad wolf? Everyone! Even if he wears a sharp suit, drives a fancy car and pulls bank robberies for fun? Especially then!
What if he's voiced by the always rakishly beguiling Sam Rockwell? Cuz then you have The Bad Guys, a snappy, snarky, never-ever sentimental concoction of cartoon chaos meets hip heist flick. You know, for kids... and grown-ups, too. (There are layers at work here.)
If everyone is predisposed to be scared of you anyway, why not lean into it? That's the attitude under which Wolf (Rockwell), a pickpocket and all-around thief, and his criminal gang operate. His gang? Oh, there's Snake (Marc Maron), a safecracker; Shark (Craig Robinson), a master of disguise; Piranha (Anthony Ramos), the tiny-but-terrifying muscle; and Tarantula (Awkwafina), the hacker. An actual rogues gallery of creatures humans are afraid of, often with little justification but with a lot of accompanying biocultural baggage.
Yes, humans are the dominant species here; The Bad Guys is nothing like a retread of 2016's Zootopia, though the two movies do share some thematic motifs regarding stereotypes and the impacts they have on us. In fact, there don't seem to be any other wolf-people or shark-people strolling around their West Coast–ish city, which raises the question of just what caused these particular animals to acquire human-level intelligence, sentience, a taste for luxury goods, and rap sheets. Are they trickster demigods who have descended to our plane to mess with us? (I have another idea, which suggests that film is tantalizingly flirting with some rather profound religio-philosophical notions, but it's something of a spoiler.)
The film opens with a genuinely thrilling car chase — one of the best I've seen onscreen in a long while — as Wolf and his buddies lead the cops on a merry automotive tour of their unnamed town. The breezy swagger of the sequence extends to the delightful animation style: computer generated but with an organic lightness that reminds me of watercolors, shot through with a golden haziness that lends a mellow insouciance; it's hot and cool at the same time, and not like anything we've seen before onscreen at all.
To be fair, the whole movie is breezy swagger, which only escalates when Wolf makes the unexpected discovery, as he comes to the assistance of a little old lady effusive with her thanks, that being good can be as satisfying as being bad. His tail traitorously (hilariously!) wags on its own at this, betraying him... and he is horrified. So he doubles down on embracing the bad by concocting a grand scheme in which the gang will pretend to become decent upstanding citizens as a way to get out of being prosecuted for their first failed heist (which may have failed in part because Wolf was so distracted by his personal epiphany).
This requires suavely convincing first the law-and-order governor, Diane Foxington (Zazie Beetz), that he and his partners in crime are capable of reform, and then their benefactor, famed millionaire philanthropist Professor Marmalade (Richard Ayoade), that they've actually been reformed. This demands Looney Tunes–esque madness, encompassing an artifact in the form of a heart-shaped meteor — there is an impact crater smack in the middle of this city; the disastrous backstory is sidestepped — a veritable tsunami of guinea pigs (yes, really), and much more.
Working from the middle-school books by Aaron Blabey, DreamWorks animator turned first-time director Pierre Perifel whips kiddie-friendly lessons (ones that grown-ups can always use reminders of) into frothy fun: stick by your friends; don't be deceived by surface appearances, including the ones we see on social media; and embrace second (and third) chances. Wolf and his pals may be bad, but The Bad Guys is all good. ♦
THE BAD GUYS
