‘The Bad Guys 2’ Saves Very Best for Last

Piere Perifel’s “The Bad Guys 2” is a nice surprise, an initially middle-of-the-road follow-up to 2022’s sleeper that hits the ground running in the late stretch and emerges a worthy, exhilarating sequel.

The Big Bad Mr. Wolf (voiced again by Sam Rockwell, essential to the film’s success) is now a respectable member of society, missing his days as a notorious villain and the head of a motley crew of thieves. Mr. Wolf and his teams fail at acquiring legitimate jobs, as none of them can pass a sample background check or come across as capable of taking on real work.

When a heist pulled off by the “Phantom Bandit” has law enforcement desperate for help, they turn to Mr. Wolf and his former “Bad Guys,” though the solution to the puzzle pits them against an entirely new crew of villains.

My daughter reads “The Bad Guys” books, and I always enjoy catching up to them as well. The wit is right there on the page.

The movies are an enjoyable goof on the Danny Ocean movies, with Rockwell obviously the George Clooney equivalent, the too-cool-for-the-room protagonist in charge of a team of ace criminals.

The animation in this franchise is wonderful, as the characters are angular, cartoonish but cool to look at. They’re in a landscape that is almost but not quite photorealistic.

After decades of Dreamworks Animation that mostly have the same round, bubbly, traditionally Disney-esque approaches to character and story design, it’s refreshing to see something this arresting catching on (although it must be said that the “Spider-Verse” movies are king at introducing a radical new animation approach for their storytelling).

The sequel ambles along agreeably from scene to scene, but it doesn’t have the laughs or freshness of the original. For most of the running time, I had a smile on my face but was ready to put this in the same category as close-but-not-quite animated sequels like “Shrek 2” and “Frozen 2.”

Once we get to the third act, the film takes a right turn and doesn’t just get better but coalesces into a great movie. There’s a bit where our heroes are tied up and suspended in the air. Not only must they try to escape but also prevent a file from being sent online.

Things don’t go the way we expect, and it propels us into the grand finale.

The sequence where our heroes must board a space shuttle while it’s launching is, I kid you not, one of the best action sequences of the summer. The complexity, elegance, and beauty, as well as chair-grabbing excitement generated, are unexpected.

So is how much fun the conclusion is, where the movie goes all in on becoming, of all things, “Moonraker” (1979). There’s also a smash edit that reveals if your heroes survived a catastrophic explosion that provides a giant laugh.

Even the final moments are sharp enough to welcome another entry.

“The Bad Guys 2” starts strong, coasting on goodwill for too long, then ends with what will be franchise highlights for a series that I hope goes on for a long time. According to my daughter, the final scenes are in line with where the books go in the long run.

I like how unabashedly nutty the whole thing is and where it apparently is headed. The Danny Ocean series feels like it has gone as far as it could go, but I’m down for more of this.

Like the original, “The Bad Guys 2” is brisk and stylish, but that final 30-minute stretch is when it becomes truly special.

Three Stars

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