The Bad Guys 2 Gets Louder, But Duller

Maybe elaborate heists, like elaborate dance sequences, don’t really make sense in animation. Or rather, they don’t make sense in American big-studio animation, where companies like Disney or DreamWorks have money to do pretty much whatever, even in their leaner years. DreamWorks in particular has made countless movies involving big, whooshing, wall-smashing, character-careening chase scenes, where at least the bombastic action has a certain whimsical sense of flight, pushing beyond the limits of traditional action (or making the lack of limits on CG-assisted action more colorful). But heists, like dances, tend to be better with some gravity, some tension between the individuals pulling it off and whatever broader laws, whether of physics or personal conduct, are supposed to be applied. The Bad Guys 2, like its predecessor, is about a bunch of cartoon animals pulling off elaborate heists. Like a lot of sequels, it feels the need to go bigger and brasher even as it repeats much of its predecessor. And so despite a streaky-canvas animation style that fuels the characters’ momentum, it eventually feels like a whole lot of pirouettes and flips around a security system that isn’t really there. It’s like that Vincent Cassel laser-dance sequence in Ocean’s 12, without Vincent Cassel.

The movie does have Sam Rockwell, who remains well-matched to his slick and white-suited animated alter ego. He plays Mr. Wolf – not to be confused with the Fantastic Mr. Fox, though there is a moment where you might expect him to do the George Clooney frustrated tie-whip thing from Out of Sight. (He’s also not to be confused with Harvey Keitel’s character from Pulp Fiction, but that’s probably obvious.) Wolf leads a group of high-tech thieves including Mr. Snake (Marc Maron), Ms. Tarantula (Awkwafina), Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson), and Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos), who we see execute one of their trademark heists in an opening flashback. Most of the movie takes place following the events of its predecessors, where events transpired to turn these Bad Guys good. Wolf in particular, however, finds that the practical matter of walking the straight and narrow isn’t so easy; his notoriety prevents him from securing a job. It’s much easier for his friend Diane Foxington (Zazie Beetz), who has maintained her position as governor (presumably of California, because despite the human-and-animal mix, the movie is set in Los Angeles) because the public has no idea that she, too, was once a crafty thief.

The Bad Guys are reluctantly pulled back into a life of crime when Kitty Kat (Danielle Brooks) and her teammates Doom (Natasha Lyonne) and Pigtail Petrova (Maria Bakalova) blackmail them into assisting with a scheme to steal a rocket from the private space-exploration firm MOON-X. (Ahem.) As the Bad Guys consider whether the social support for their reform is even in place, there are some winning smaller moments. A romantic entanglement between Snake and Doom is pretty funny. There is also a tentative romance between Wolf and Diane; it’s less funny and features one of the other Bad Guys asking if Wolf has been friendzoned. This might seem like a lot of relationship stuff for a kid-friendly cartoon, but then, the kids certainly aren’t learning about romance from Marvel movies, so maybe it’s up to DreamWorks to pick up the slack.