The Bad Guys 2 review — praise be for this breezy sequel
A flashback to the naughty days accentuates the contrast in glamour as Messrs Wolf, Snake, Shark and Piranha and Ms Tarantula insouciantly pull off a heist in Cairo involving a parachute, a crane and a breakneck escape in a sports car. Back in the present day Wolf is driving a spluttering old banger …
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The lure of reoffending is strong, then, which is just as well because these films, like the Despicable Me franchise, hinge on the subversive thrill of rooting for the morally compromised. Adapted from the graphic novels by Aaron Blabey and directed, like the first film, by the Frenchman Pierre Perifel, this is another feast of angular animation and insouciant one-liners with a ghetto-fabulous score from Daniel Pemberton.
The twist-filled story somehow finds room for Mexican wrestlers, a metal called McGuffinite (tee-hee) and a sequence in which our antiheroes board a moon rocket that makes Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible look like Compo in Last of the Summer Wine trundling down a hill in a bath. If that sounds a bit busy, it's all done with a light and knowing touch. A third film is planned and that doesn't feel like overkill.★★★★☆
PG, 104min
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