Last year, 1995’s Bad Boys made the cut for my annual countdown for the most dubious of reasons and it is a similarly questionable rationale that has led me to include the 2003 sequel. More of the Christmasishness (or lack of it) later, but it would be remiss of me not to give a brief appraisal of the movie.
A quick internet search would reveal that opinions are divided on whether this is the best of the Bad Boys movies or by far the worst. I’m in the latter camp. My personal favourite is the 2020 threequel Bad Boys For Life and, while not quite as good, 2024’s Bad Boys: Ride or Die was certainly enjoyable. As per my post last year, the original Bad Boys is not necessarily a movie I rate especially highly, but I’ll always be quite fond of it for it’s mid-nineties credentials.
I have far less nostalgic love for Bad Boys 2, so it has to stand on its own merits. And it has very few of those. If you like mindless action (and I often do) then the visual effects are Michael Bay at his best. Unfortunately everything else is very much Michael Bay at his worst, which means that Bad Boys 2 is a series of car chases, fight sequences and explosions, held together by very little in the way of a story. Which makes the 148 minute runtime borderline offensive.
Score for Christmasishness
There is an obscure reference to Christmas, which has little to no bearing on the plot. Or at least I don’t think it has much bearing on the plot, but as the notion of plot seems to be a fairly alien concept to this film, I could be wrong about the significance of the Christmas reference. But I don’t think I am.
James Proclaims! 