The Bad Guys

A conversation in a diner between Snake (Marc Maron) and Wolf (Sam Rockwell) - suggests that they are up to no good. Which is played out as they leave with all the customers and employees avoiding them, even though they pay.

This continues as they saunter across the road into a bank which they rob. The rest of the gang arrive and we are off on a car chase with hundreds of coppers chasing the ‘Bad Guys’. A long sequence sees them escape to their hideout to count the loot and banter. There’s a lot of that in this film.

They do eventually get caught and placed on rehabilitation programmes, to avoid jail, which they are generally terrible at but we see some flaws in their friendship beginning. This is all part of a plan by wealthy do-gooder Professor Marmalade (Richard Ayoade) with the encouragement of Governor Foxington (Zazie Beetz). Needless to say plans go wrong, friends split and people don’t turn out to be who we thought they were. The latter isn’t true as that is obvious from the start.

Written by Aaron Blabey (whose books this is based on), Etan Cohen and Yoni Brenner this animal based animated caper can only be aimed at the very young as everyone else will find this tiring and predictable. Every single heist trope is deployed from the bland robbers’ names, obsessive cop (Alex Borstein), love interest and split screen.

It’s directed at pace by Pierre Perifel with a truly annoying soundtrack that doesn’t let up. However it’s the animation which is a surprise as it is not up to what cinema audiences are used to seeing these days; it lacks finesse and detail and the eyes in particular look very odd indeed.

It has a very Ocean’s Eleven, Thomas Crown Affair etc vibe that has been desiccated to suit the target audience. That could be problematic for an adult audience who have to sit through this stodge when they accompany their children. It is highly unlikely that an adult will want to see this other than for parental duties as this doesn’t have the sophisticated narrative of a Pixar or indeed some of DreamWorks’ other animations that can hold both audiences.