Thoroughly Satisfied with This Sequel

Author's Rating:

Pros: Hysterically funny through most of the movie

Cons: Ecstasy scene at club too glamorous

The Bottom Line: 
Will Smith can make anything look good, and Martin Lawrence does the same thing for "funny". Together, it's an action packed afternoon. I'm not disappointed! You won't be either!

Author's Review
I love Will Smith. I like Martin Lawrence. Together, they are quite the comic duo. However, in this movie, they rise above their previous work.

I went with my son (11), my mother-in-law (75), my husband (34) and myself (30). I expected to have to cover my son's eyes a couple times, and maybe explain a few things to my mother-in-law, so I went in the right frame of mind for what this movie offers.

It starts off like one of our favorite video games, special forces prowling through the wilderness. I moved to the front of my seat - and I stayed there through the whole movie.

It's fast. The action is in front you, always, right in the middle of the screen. From the first minute you start with the action scenes until the very end of the movie, it doesn't die down. When they aren't making you laugh, they're making you dodge flying debris from the impressive camera work. I went to school in Miami, and even I was impressed with the location coverage and the action that happened there.

Humor weaves it's way into every scene, most of the time it's presented to you, some of the time it hits you as the movie moves to the next scene. Either way, there are as many smiles as there are wrecked cars.

Don't get me wrong though. There are two bad parts to the movie -

Firstly, the graphic violence is ever-present. From slow-motion bullets penetrating skin with very illustrated blood-sprays to a dis-embodied finger filling the screen, gratuitous blood scenes are common. Most of the time though these are hidden by comedy and seem as if they are part of some kind of parody of today's violent movies.

The second thing I was disappointed in was the Ecstasy scene at the club. It was like watching a soft porn right there with my mother-in-law and my preteen son in attendance. The movie producers decided to show Ecstasy in a very erotic light, and had it been just myself and my husband, we could have had a very pleasurable memory which lead to a very pleasurable evening. But the family members sharing my row led me to analyze these scenes very carefully. The movie made Ecstasy glamorous. It was portrayed as something a young man should definitely seek should he want to experience the pleasures of the flesh. It showed young women pawing each other and enough tongues to make a seasoned porno star blush. And that bothered me. Even when they showed a young man dying on the street from an overdose, it didn't erase the erotic images that filled the screen only moments before. The young man's death was overshadowed by the sex that the pills promised. And the producers spent several moments videotaping through the legs of grinding female pelvises, so that the four seconds the dying man was shown seemed like a surreal dream. I had been hoping they would show how detrimental the drug was, and instead they advertised for it.

Other than these two things, I had a blast. We have decided it was good enough to get for our home collection and will be waiting for it to come out on DVD.

In summary: Bad Boys, Bad Boys...Whatcha going to let me do??? (Two thumbs up! Yummy!)