The Bad Guys

This is fun light hearted animation. The story is entertaining and adorable at times. The humor is to my liking: even though some jokes are predictable, they're still well placed and executed well. I personally enjoyed the art style combining 3D animation with comic style 2D drawings. Kudos to the animators, the faces of the characters were very expressive.

Of course the animation is a massive highlight, and I also enjoyed the story, characters, and some of the plot twists. It's a tad predictable and not incredibly funny but hey! I had a really good time.

I'll be honest, The Bad Guys is far from masterpieces like Pixar's Up, Wall-E, and the plot is rather predictable. But who am I kidding, almost all animations are predictable since they're made for kids so that shouldn't be a problem, as long as they're enjoyable. Fortunately for The Bad Guys, now I wouldn't say the movie 'nailed it', but it turned out to be pretty decent.

So the main characters are really likeable (pretty cute I would say), the voice acting is great (Sam Rockwell is wonderful, his voice is just so magnetic. Beetz's Diane is wonderful too.) Wolf and Fox have an amazing chemistry (I love the pair), and the characters' interactions are executed rather well, the storytelling pace is smooth and the motives are clear and believable, so there won't be any scenes that feel off, forced or awkward (Except for the opening car chase, that part is over the top, that I agree with Foxinton. And personally I hate this 'talking to viewers' thing, movies should be immersive! 'Show, not tell.' Isn't that what you writers prefer?) (I do like the opening scene though, kinda like Pulp Fiction, but in a reletively-terribly-written way. But I don't blame the writers for this, I mean, they're not Quentin, are they? It's just an animation.) Hats off to the writer/director, they've done a great job on this.

Now what I like most about The Bad Guys is that it doesn't try to give a lecture, it doesn't try to convey any messages (not anything big or meaningful at least, heh.) Disney and Pixar would be like 'Ohh! We should add messages into animations, we should teach kids about what's right and wrong, we should use animations as a way to express our political beliefs.' No, The Bad Guys just tries to entertain people, and it did rather well. I'm not saying that I hate messages in an animation, I love meaningful and educational animations, but only when the story is great. It seems to me that some animations focus on 'the big message' so much that they forget the fact that a well-written story should come first. No matter how true or how important your message is, nobody would like your animation if the story is bad. The Bad Guys does a good job on this by not giving any lecture. It knows what it is, it knows it can't be as good as animations like Inside Out, which is both entertaining and educational, so it chooses to only entertain. And judging by the result, it really did a good job.

Great characters, some real LOL moments, and a nice, fun and cohesive story. Great animation and sound. It felt a little long for 100 mins, probably due to the predictability, although there was a fun twist.

So, it looks to me that the Bad Guys was influenced by the anime Lupin the third. Makes perfect sense, so many animated movies and series are. Sam Rockwell's Big Bad Wolf is a total play on this. Although I did notice that Disney's Seeing Red has a similar look so it looks like anime is getting even more intergraded in everything. I'm good with it!

The actual story is by the numbers. These animated features love the idea of teaching children to think outside the box and rising above what the world thinks you are, in a movie that's story arch could not have been more obvious if they tried, but that animation was so good that I'm too focus on it to care.

It's a good ensemble cast of characters. The Wolf, the Shark, the Tarantula (Played by Awkafina, a fav in this movie, just really cute), the Parana, and the Snake. It was a good crew and it's kind of great how the character and the voices all gel together.

But really, I can't stop talking about the animation. Its realty worth it to watch things unfold. Lots of good kinetic energy, the moving pictures never slow down and consistently lively throughout. Flawless.

Thumbs up.