‘My shit always works sometimes…’
Bombastic film director Michael Bay receives a lot of hate for his numbskull, explosion-heavy movies but as we all know, there is a time and a place for muscles and explosions and things going BANG. As much as I love Armageddon and I’m an advocate for the first Transformers movie, science fiction is not where Bay belongs. There is too much technical stuff. Too many nerds. No. Bad Boys is the perfect film for Michael Benjamin Bay. It doesn’t have to be logical. It doesn’t have to make sense. It only has to be macho and entertaining and fun. And Bad Boys is all three…
Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) and Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) are partners in the Miami Police Department. The former is an uptight family man who likes to wisecrack and shout things loudly whilst the latter is an uptight, rich, playboy who also likes to wisecrack and shout things loudly. Together, they are the bad boys. This is Lethal Weapon but without any of the tortured soul nuance that Mel Gibson brings to that franchise. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Captain Conrad Howard (Joe Pantoliano stealing every scene in which he appears) desperately tries to keep the bad boys in check while Tea Leoni is also there presumably with the instruction to “just look hot” (the now infamous piece of advice that Bay delivered to Megan Fox on the set of Transformers).
So yeah, Bad Boys is a dumb movie but it’s also incredibly entertaining and genuinely funny. Smith and Lawrence make for a fantastic double act, and while the lack of a compelling antagonist hurts the movie, all the flashing lights, loud noises and bright colours distract from the various plot holes and lack of credibility. That being said, this film has fewer action set pieces than any of the other Bay Boys movies but that’s what makes it so good. Instead, we have more of the buddy cop stuff. That’s where the magic resides.
While the Bad Boys sequels have their moments, none of them have ever come close to capturing the magic of the source material. Classic Will Smith. Classic Michael Bay. Classic big dumb cinema.
