I haven’t seen a Dreamworks movie this hyped since the 3rd How To Train your Dragon Movie. From the time the first trailer came around, audiences went bonkers for the first impression of the film with its stylistic animation and its funny characters. The newest of Dreamworks movies called The Bad Guys is based on a series of graphic novels by Australian author Aaron Blabey that follows a group of anthropomorphic animals who are regarded as criminals as they try to do good deeds to make people think of them as good guys even when their hijinks go completely wrong in all the most despicable ways possible. This movie looks to go the same storytelling route with the addition of it feeling like a mashup of Sly Cooper, Zootopia, Madagascar, and a little bit of Spider-Man Into the Spiderverse. Is this Dreamworks’s next big hit? Or is it doomed to be a more style over substance movie that will quickly be forgotten?
A gang of notorious criminals known as The Bad Guys including the likes of Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell), Mr. Snake (Marc Maron), Ms. Traunla (Awkwafina), Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson), and Mr. Phraina (Anthony Ramos) enjoys committing crimes and heists all over the city. However, when they are finally caught after trying to pull off their greatest crime yet, Mr. Wolf makes a plee to Governer Foxington (Zazie Beetz) to give them a chance to be model citizens within the next few days. With the help of Professor Marmalade (Richard Ayoade), The Bad Guys will need to become Good for a change, but that may be harder than it sounds as they always seem to mess up the simplest good deeds knowing their bad guy history.
This story is for the most part very well written and there is a ton of sight gags and witty writing that plagues the whole movie. I’ll admit that when the movie first started, the film didn’t waste any time getting into a fart joke which is very a very dull and juvenile way to start any “kids” movie. Thankfully as the film played on, the writing became more clever and the jokes did not always have to resort to bathroom humor to win me over. Aside from being funny, the movie also has a great sentiment about what it means to be a good guy which can lead to some heartfelt and even heartbreaking moments. Even cliches that have been done before in other movies of its kind like the third act split up are done in a very unexpected and smart way that pays off near the end. The only major problem I did have with the overall narrative is the actual antagonist of the movie. Not only was it predictable seeing it was a twist villain, but it felt a little unneeded as the movie would have been stronger if the main conflict was just the bad guys trying to become good and nothing else. Does that plotline ruin everything? Of course, it doesn’t. The writing is still very clever and even though some plot elements are better than others, this is still Dreamworks at their best and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
The Characters are fun and enjoyable and just like the storytelling, they are more than what they appear to be, the main bad guys work great off each other and they got some real cool voice work behind them with the likes of Sam Rockwell as Wolf, Marc Maron as Snake, Awkwafina as Tarantula, Craig Robinson as Shark, and Anthony Ramos as Piranha. All these characters are the main givers of hilarious humor and subtle sentiment. They won’t be alone as there are some other characters you’ll see portrayed by talented actors such as Zazie Beetz playing Governor Foxington who is kind but also mysterious and Richard Ayoade as Professor Marmalade who is adorable and very friendly. No matter how big or how small the roles are, each actor does their part to help the script and the story take full advantage of itself to create one heck of a wild ride.
The animation is by far the most unique thing you’ll see from a computer-animated movie. Instead of looking hyper-realistic and true to life, the film offers us a full-blown cartoony style visual splendor that takes great inspiration from old classic cartoons and even modern-day movies like Sony’s Into the Spiderverse and Mithcels vs the Machines and even Pixar’s Turning Red. Unlike Madagascar where they tried to create a Chuck Jones cartoon but with 3D realistic imagery, this film fights against the realism of computer animation to make everything look like a 2D cartoon while adding stylistic choices such as panels showing different things on-screen, using painterly 2D looking visuals over 3D skins, or using slapstick in a way that looks like something straight out of Loony Tunes. The rules in this world are zanier and over-the-top like a great cartoon, but the movie does know when to tone down the visuals to have a more subtle or emotional moment. If Dreamworks plans to make more movies that look more like 2D animation than 3D animation, count me interested because this is a new look for the animation studio that I can absolutely stand by.
The music was composed by David Pemberton who is most known for scoring the music for the first two LittleBigPlanet games and movies like Spider-Man Into the Spiderverse. The music moves at a suave and spunky pace as it combines heist music with orchestrated music. There are even songs that are in this movie and most of them are original surprisingly. These songs are fun and lively even if they aren’t super memorable. Tunes like “Good Tonight” and “Feelin Alright” bring passionate energy to the soundtrack and they are not limited to feeling like every modern-day song ever made as they avoid the traps of making music that is flat and standard. The soundtrack is overall very good and the songs and orchestrated tunes add to the fun experience you’ll have when watching this movie.
I will say that this movie isn’t quite as good as the hype suggests, but this is without a doubt one of the best original movies Dreamworks has put out in a long long time. There is a lot to love about this movie from its fast-paced and smart storytelling, likable characters, unique animation that is some of the best the Dreamworks studio has given us, and a cool music score from Daniel Pemberton. Sure, some of the jokes are aimed more at kids and there are times the storytelling can lose some of its sharpness from the writing, but that's a small price to pay to witness an experience that is unlike anything you’ve seen from the animation studio thus far. With all the pointless Dreamworks sequels that are slated to come out in the future, I would love to see a sequel to this movie if at all possible. I hope this movie continues to get more and more success because this is a film from Dreamworks that is legit good and may prove that we may be entering a new era of Dreamworks movies.
(Final Grade: B+)