Movie Review

New animated movie The Bad Guys 2 achieves success with a great cast

Snake, Shark, Wolf, Piranha, and Tarantula in The Bad Guys 2.

Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures / DreamWorks Animation

For a long time, Disney was the undisputed champion when it came to animated movies, but in the 21st century, Dreamworks Animation has gone toe-to-toe with them, establishing franchises like Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, and How to Train Your Dragon. In 2022 Dreamworks released the instant winner The Bad Guys, which naturally made it easy for the studio to greenlight a sequel, The Bad Guys 2.

In the first film, the criminal group known as the Bad Guys - Wolf (Sam Rockwell), Snake (Marc Maron), Tarantula (Awkwafina), Shark (Craig Robinson), and Piranha (Anthony Ramos) - made the decision to go good. Now, even though they caught and helped imprison the evil guinea pig Professor Rupert Marmalade IV (Richard Ayoade), their old reputation continues to haunt them, with none of them able to secure a real job.

When a thief starts stealing various valuable items made of a material called “MacGuffinite,” the Bad Guys are prime suspects, especially in the eyes of police chief-turned-commissioner Misty Luggins (Alex Borstein). It’s up to the Bad Guys to clear their own name, with some help from Governor Diane Foxington (Zazie Beetz), as well as a trio of new female villains: Doom (Natasha Lyonne), Kitty Kat (Danielle Brooks), and Pigtail (Maria Bakalova).

Directed by Pierre Perifel and JP Sans, and written by Etan Cohen and Yoni Brenner, the film has the same manic energy as the first film, going in so many oddball directions that it can’t help but entertain. Taking place in a world where humans and human-like animals live side-by-side with no one batting an eye, at no point does the film pretend to play the normal rules of physics. Because of this, it feels completely natural for them to jump cars off buildings, be twisted into unnatural shapes, and even go to space on the outside of a ship.

The idea of the main group being somewhat reformed criminals adds on a layer of complexity to the story that is not present in most films aimed at children. There are references to other heist movies and some slightly off-color jokes, but more than anything it’s the vibe that a good crime-adjacent story can have. Everyone can laugh at the ridiculous and completely unbelievable ways Shark disguises himself, but the way that kind of thing relates to the history of crime/spy movies makes it even more enjoyable for those with a broad cinematic knowledge.

What makes the series, and this film in particular, so fun is that it brings in elements that appeal to adults while still staying laser-focused on entertaining kids. The design of the characters, which are completely different from the ones in the book series by Australian author Aaron Blabey, are subtle in some ways and over-the-top in others. The filmmakers once again combine different animation styles to make all of the characters pop, and various exotic locations - including outer space - give the animators plenty of opportunities to show their skills.

The cast of the film was on the money in the first film, and each of them prove themselves again here. As the lead, Rockwell gets the most opportunities to show his worth, but each of the main actors makes their character their own. New additions like Lyonne, Brooks, and Bakalova fit in seamlessly, with Lyonne even inspiring her character’s look to a degree.

Not every Dreamworks Animation film has been a success, but The Bad Guys 2 avoids sequelitis by keeping what worked from the first film and adding in just enough new stuff to keep things interesting. With fun characters, compelling design, and a story that goes in unexpected directions, the film makes it easy to root for the bad guys.

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The Bad Guys 2 is now playing in theaters.

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Movie Review

Camp Miasma puts a comedic twist on the classic slasher movie

Photo courtesy of MUBI

Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson in Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma.

The horror genre really ramped up in the 1970s and ‘80s, bringing the slasher subgenre that gave audiences new visuals of gore, but also a reliance on sexism and homophobia that would come to define the era. The new film Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma wrestles with that legacy in ways that are funny, thought-provoking, and downright strange.

Kris (Hannah Einbinder) is a queer filmmaker who has been hired to reboot the moldy IP that is the Camp Miasma franchise, one that was fresh in the 1970s but which numerous shlocky sequels have rendered irrelevant. In an attempt to get to know the property better, Kris has scored a meeting with the reclusive Billy (Gillian Anderson), the star of the original film who has shunned the public eye for decades.

Turns out that Billy lives deep in the woods at Camp Rivoli, which served as the location for the first film. As Kris tries to get to know Billy and convince her to be a part of the new film, she starts to fall under Billy’s spell and the lore of the franchise as a whole. That includes believing that the movie’s villain, Little Death — a transgender person who has an air conditioning vent as a head/mask — may not just be a character created for the movies.

Written and directed by Jane Schoenbrun (I Saw the TV Glow), the film at first feels like it’s going to go the straight-up comedy route, with comic explosions of blood, a strange fascination with candy brands, and a production design that does nothing to hide that the two main actors are on a movie set with painted backdrops. This is backed up by Kris’ phone conversations with her girlfriend, Mari (Jasmine Savoy Brown) and her agent (Sarah Sherman), as well as numerous other details.

But the film starts to go down the surreal route the longer Kris stays at the camp with Billy, especially when they sit down to watch the original Camp Miasma. An extended sequence shows a good amount of that film-within-the-film, demonstrating why Kris and Billy have a love/hate relationship with the property. For Kris, though, the lines between the film and the real world start to blur, and Schoenbrun uses a variety of out-there elements to drive the point home.

The final act of the film can barely be described as Kris goes deeper down the rabbit hole, with Schoenbrun using her film to comment on the horror genre as a whole, its treatment of women and LGBT people, the movie industry, and more. All the while the “camp” of Camp Miasma maintains a presence, with candy wrappers showing up everywhere and the tongue-in-cheek references to Little Death (the French term La petite mort, which means “the little death,” is a euphemism for orgasm).

Einbinder, an Emmy winner for Hacks, is the perfect person to inhabit her role. Her established real-life and fictional personas color everything she does in the film, with her enthusiasm and curiosity shining through. Anderson leans heavily into another reference — Norma Desmond from Sunset Boulevard — to create a character that is as mysterious as she is alluring. Supporting actors like Brown, Sherman, Patrick Fischler, Dylan Baker, and Eva Victor keep the movie at the right pitch all the way through.

While other films have made fun of horror movie tropes before, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma finds a wholly unique way of doing so. It’s a funny and daring trip into the psyches of two women who may be victims of their own obsessions, and of the movies that made them that way.

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Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma is now playing in select theaters

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