Director – Pierre Perifel Co-Director JP Sans – 2025 – US – Cert. PG – 104m
****
A criminal gang of animals led by a wolf mastermind attempts to go straight but are extorted into doing one last job – animated feature sequel is out in UK cinemas on Friday, July 25th
Like its predecessor, The Bad Guys 2 manages to successfully parody the meanness and violence of the gangster movie genre in a children’s animated film without any of the meanness and violence normally associated with that genre. You might wonder where you could go with what is essentially a sequel to five bad guys turning from bad to good. This skilfully implements its answer: introduce a rival gang, as bad as the original protagonists, who force our reformed heroes into that old gangster movie trope: they want to go straight, but before they can get there they have to do one last job.
Here’s the twist. The Bad Guys, like most gangsters, are (mostly) male. Their new rivals, The Bad Girls, are all female.
Thus, the eponymous, anthropomorphised animal gang Mr Wolf (voice: Sam Rockwell from (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Martin McDonagh, 2017; Seven Psychopaths, Martin McDonagh, 2012; Lawn Dogs, John Duigan, 1997) the leader of the pack, Mr. Snake (voice: Marc Maron from The Order, Justin Kurzel, 2024; Maron TV series, 2013-16; To Leslie, Michael Morris, 2022) the safecracker, Ms. Tarantula (voice: Awkwafina from The Little Mermaid, Rob Maeshall, 2023; Ocean’s Eight, Gary Ross, 2019; The Farewell, Lulu Wang, 2018) the computer tech, Mr. Shark (voice: Craig Robinson rom This Is the End, Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogan, 2013; Hot Tub Time Machine; Steve Pink, 2010) the master of disguise and, finally, the loose cannon Mr. Piranha (voice: Anthony Ramos from Twisters, Lee Isaac Chung, 2024; Hamilton, Thomas Kall, 2021; In the Heights, John M. Chu, 2020from Deadpool 2, David Leitch, 2019; Joker, Todd Phillips, 2019), alias master criminal The Crimson Claw, not to mention S.U.C.M.-incarcerated criminal guinea pig mastermind Professor Marmalade (voice: Richard Ayoade from The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (short), Wes Anderson, 2024; Early Man, Nick Park, 2018; The Boxtrolls, Graham Annable, Anthony Stacchi, 2014; director of Submarine, 2010), rub up against anthropomorphised female gang the Bad Girls, comprising ruthless snow leopard leader Kitty Kat (voice: Danielle Brooks (voice: Danielle Brooks from The Color Purple, Blitz Bazawule, 2023; Clemency, Chinonye Chukwu, 2019; Orange is the New Black, TV series, 2013-19), brilliant Bulgarian wild boar engineer Pigtail (voice: Maria Bakalova from The Apprentice, Ali Abassi, 2024; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, James Gunn, 2023; Bodies Bodies Bodies, Halina Reijn, 2022; Borat Subsequent Movie Film, Jason Wollner, 2020), and duplicitous raven Doom (voice: Natasha Lyonne from Orange is the New Black; Robots, Chris Wedge, Carlos Saldanha, 2005; American Pie, Paul Weitz, 1999), who force The Bad Guys to use their expertise to steal a rocket.
Also making a welcome return is The Bad Guys’ nemesis former Police Chief and now Commissioner Misty Luggins (voice: Alex Borstein from Family Guy, creators Seth MacFarlane, David Zuckerman, 1999-2025; A Million Ways to Die in the West, Seth MacFarlane, 2014; ParaNorman, Chris Butler, Sam Fell, 2012; Catwoman, Pitof, 2004) who in both temperament and animation style appears to have been modelled on Inspector Zenigata from Japan’s Lupin III franchise, even though that character is thin and male. The Commissioner’s sole reason for being is to catch Wolf and Co., yet somehow she never quite manages it, to both her own frustration and the delight of the audience.
(For all those wondering, S.U.C.M. stands for Super Ultra Crazy Max prison, an informational nugget buried deep in the film’s press handout production notes. If it’s in the film somewhere, I missed it. Perhaps the full name is mentioned somewhere in the first film.)
Five years ago, in the opening scene, The Bad Guys use their own criminal expertise to steal a state of the art sports car from a rich businessman Mr. Moon (voice: Colin Jost from Saturday Night Live, TV series, creator: Lorene Michaels, 1975-; Fly Me to the Moon, Greg Berlanti, 2024; Tom & Jerry: The Movie, Tim Story, 2021) in Cairo, Egypt. Somehow, although everything seems to be going well, five years later, the Bad Guys’ erstwhile leader Mr. Wolf is driving a beaten up domestic car that’s on its last legs, going for job interviews.
Mr. Wolf’s current interview is at a bank, where the human interviewer is understandably none too keen on hiring someone whose previous interaction with the institution consisted of robbing it. A promise of a phone callback is shown to be completely hollow by the interviewer’s shredding Mr. Wolf’s resume behind closed doors after Mr. Wolf has left the room. Which Mr. Wolf sees when he’s loitering outside and the door is accidentally open.
Mr. Piranha scarcely fares better, since he gets nervous in interviews and uncontrollably farts noxious green gas (which usually indicates he’s lying).
As they spar box at the local gym, Mr. Wolf talks about it with Diane, whose criminal identity The Bad Guys concealed while they were doing prison time. What he doesn’t know, however, is that she is visiting the incarcerated Professor Marmalade for advice. And then she learns someone else was asking him about the properties of the metal called MacGuffinite, which has the power to magnetically attract gold. Which, it turns out, is what Kitty Kat really wants to steal a rocket built by the aforementioned Mr. Moon for – to use it as a MacGuffinite carrier to attract as much gold as possible from all corners of the globe.
Kitty kidnaps The Bad Guys and places them in an impossible, binary situation where they must pursue one of two mutually exclusive courses of action. One of these involves preventing Kitty uploading her video footage to the outside internet world to show that Diane Foxington is really the Crimson Paw, which will end her political career. But for every second they devote to stopping that happening… Well, you’ll have to see the movie.
Mention should be made of the particularly gripping relationship between Mr. Snake and Doom, the latter a razor-sharp minded manipulator of people, the former falling madly in love with her because of her criminally deceptive ways – the classic lure of the bad girl. Like so much else here, both the beautifully studied, character animation and the top-drawer, heavily improvised acting performances that serve as its base contribute to the complex nuance of the situation which may end up making this particular romance (if that it what it is) the screen relationship of the year.
In addition, the film is packed full of hilarious gags, e.g. part of the snake’s torso leaning out the car window like an arm (pictured above).
There follows a terrific heist sequence in which The Bad Guys board the vertically launching rocket by leading off a rising helicopter bedside it, followed by impressive action sequences that recall nothing so much as franchises Mission: Impossible, James Bond (particularly Moonraker, Lewis Gilbert, 1979) or even China’s Boonie Bears, and the film sets itself up at the end with The Good Guys and The Bad Girls united in what ;looks like a variation of the Impossible Mission Force (IMF), suggesting that The Bad Guys franchise will run and run. The real challenge here is to ensure that the clever silliness of the first two films can be maintained; if they can manage that – and it’s a road strewn with many, many potential pitfalls, most of which Hollywood will actively encourage – then I welcome further entries.
The Bad Guys 2 is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, July 25th.
Trailer:
Trailer 2: