Dreamworks’ latest animated movie, The Bad Guys, was released on April 22. The movie features a group of stereotypically feared animals living alongside humans in a modern city, who are forced to try and become good to make up for the many heists they have worked throughout their lives. Unfortunately, when everyone is scared of you and immediately expects the worst, it is hard to get a fresh start.
There are a lot of good things to be said about The Bad Guys. First, the plot of the film, with its idea that some animals are just “born scary” and have no other options in their life but to continue to scare, is pretty interesting to consider. If one were really to dig into it, it also has a lot of real-world parallels, especially when it comes to being held back by where you were born and what you look like. I’m sure that for kids, this movie had a takeaway of not taking people at face value and understanding that people can be more than just how they look, but for older viewers, this seemingly innocent movie had some hard punches packed into it.
The plot twist of the film was also very funny, with the *spoiler* super friendly and altruistic guinea pig actually plotting to control all the energy production of the world and steal all the money that people donated to his cause for community services. Once again, there is a lot of under-the-surface messaging here that kids probably won’t pick up on, but was interesting for my friends and me as an older audience. The race to develop clean energy and market its production has been an ongoing movement throughout the past few decades, and some very notable names (ahem Musk ahem) have been getting into the game.
The art style that animation director Pierre Perifel has been pioneering for his first feature film was absolutely gorgeous. I am usually not a huge fan of cartoon-style animation, but even I had to recognize that the animation, with its 2-D illustration style, was gorgeous. Alongside the art, the characters themselves were hilarious. From the literal lone wolf, to the hacking gamer-girl tarantula, to the snake with a penchant for guinea pig consumption, each and every animal on screen was a riot from beginning to end.
That being said, there were some pretty huge plot holes in The Bad Guys, the most notable being the lack of any kind of explanation of how some animals in the city became sentient and able to talk, and why not all of them have this ability. For some reason, only the Bad Guys gang, the villainous guinea pig, and the mayor of the town are sentient animals, and every other civilian seems to be human. Which begs the question: how terrible is everyone else in the town, if the best option for mayor was a talking fox? Even more questionable is the very significant plot point of Mr. Snake eating guinea pigs. Are they sentient like Professor Marmalade, or somehow not sentient, like the random cat that Mr. Wolf saves? We never know, and are instead left with the haunting thought: is Mr. Snake eating sentient guinea pigs?
While there is a pretty giant plot hole in the movie, The Bad Guys was still funny and definitely thought-provoking to watch. It had endearingly evil characters, a beautiful art style, a sexy car, and led viewers to mentally explain away the potential ethical issues with eating sentient animals, all within 100 minutes. The over 2,500 people on Rotten Tomatoes that gave The Bad Guys a 93 per cent score were not wrong, but we all might need a glass of wine after watching this flick. Overall, I would highly recommend watching The Bad Guys, just anticipate the philosophizing that will happen after the fact.
Allison is starting her BA in English with a minor in Criminology to become a publishing contract lawyer. In her spare time, she watches way too many true crime shows and reads a lot of Y.A. fiction, while slugging along on various articles.
