TV's Martin and Fresh Prince meet `Beverly Hills Cop'
Bad Boys begins when a bunch of thugs steal $100 million worth of heroin seized by the Miami Police Department in a drug bust. Narcotics detectives Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) have to catch the bad guys while protecting a witness (Téa Leoni) to a drug-related murder.
Michael Barrie, Tim Mulholland and Doug Richardson wrote the imaginatively bankrupt script. One would think that three writers could come up with a single witty line or halfway plausible plot development. Nope. It's all macho posturing, lame jokes and stale contrivances.
One of these contrivances has the detectives spend a (not-so-)good part of the film pretending to be each other for the witness' benefit. Strange they should go to so much trouble for her, since they leave her in all kinds of danger and wind up having to plow through bad guys to rescue her. Of course, the bad guys keep her alive long after common sense would dictate that they kill her, thus giving the bad boys an opportunity to get her back.
This is the first feature film for director Michael Bay, whose previous work has been in TV commercials and music videos. You could probably guess as much from this film's slick surfaces, fancy camera angles and loud soundtrack. There's plenty of volatile materials around that make big explosions when someone shoots them. I'm yawning already.
Still, you can understand why the film was made. Smith and Lawrence are a good team despite the absence of material, and, given a script, they could be a great team. They complement each other well, with Smith softening some of Lawrence's hard edges and Lawrence keeping Smith grounded.
They also make good action heroes. Smith has a commanding physical presence. He looks good running with his shirt flying open (I heard actual gasps from females in the audience at the screening I attended). Even Lawrence, who is nobody's idea of a model physique, looks wiry, not wimpy.
There hasn't been this good an action/comedy team since, well, Eddie Murphy a decade ago. When he was in peak form (in 48 Hrs. and the original Beverly Hills Cop ), Murphy had the whole package, combining Smith's good looks and fluid charm with Lawrence's high energy and abrasive wit.
Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer produced Bad Boys as well as the Beverly Hills Cop films, and I'm sure Smith and Lawrence reminded him of Murphy's bygone glory.
The supporting cast includes Joe Pantoliano, who overdoes the Italian cop bit, and Tcheky Karyo, who is fast replacing Jeroen Krabbé and Julian Sands as Hollywood's favorite Eurotrash villain.
Téa Leoni is a bore, but that's hardly her fault. No actress could have made this role interesting. Women in these movies exist to show off their bodies, get killed or give enough information to the men so the plot can move forward. In a crisis, they either become hysterical or bitch about some completely irrelevant matter (Leoni gets to do both here). This portrayal of women would be highly offensive were it not so routine.
What a waste to cast a well-paired and well-qualified team and then not have them do or say anything remotely memorable. Bad Boys doesn't even fail in a new way. I guess we can watch "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and "Martin" and dream of the movie these two brilliant comics might have made together.
This item appeared in the Arts & Entertainment section of the April 21, 1995 issue.
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