The Bad Guys. Photo / Supplied
SCORES
Number of bad guys: 5
Number of bad parents: 1
SHE SAW
A few weeks ago, out of nowhere, our 8-year-old started saying she wanted to see The Bad Guys movie. As far as I knew she'd never read the graphic novels on which the film is based - I was only vaguely aware of them because they seem to manspread across the bookshelf at Kmart where I'm usually trying to find The Babysitters Club. When she told me she'd read them at school, I became uncomfortably aware of how much I don't know about her life.
The Bad Guys is a heist movie for kids - like Ocean's Eleven but with fewer hunks and more animated wildlife. At no stage since that film's release over 20 years ago did I think, "You know what? They should turn that movie about sexy criminals into a children's film." And that's why I'm not making it big in Hollywood, because this movie is a total riot.
It follows a hodgepodge of anthropomorphised animal misfits whose only thing in common is a desire to pull off the best heists in history. Along the way, they find their consciences and accidentally become the good guys. It's high action all the way, but not so enthralling a tired parent couldn't take a little nap through one to four high-speed pursuits.
The cast is great: Sam Rockwell, Anthony Ramos, Craig Robinson, Awkwafina (who also happens to be in one of the Ocean's films), Zazie Beetz, Richard Ayoade and more. If there's anything I'm going to take issue with in this film, it's that four out of the five "bad guys" are male. Sigh. The original book has four main characters - all male - and in the book Ms Tarantula (Awkwafina) is a mister, so I guess we can call that progress, but we can definitely do better than that.
Greg's going to bang on about how The Bad Guys is derivative and complain about the lack of originality in Hollywood today, blah blah blah, but there's a fine line between derivation and inspiration and I'm choosing to see it as the latter.
I asked the kids what they thought. The 8-year-old said she liked it a lot and her favourite character was Diane Foxington - note to Hollywood, that's one of the only female characters. The 6-year-old also really liked it but the 5-year-old, who'd looked pretty unimpressed throughout, said it was too long. Later that afternoon he complained of chest pains and the next day he tested positive for Covid, so I think we can take his review with a grain of salt.
HE SAW
When Zanna asked me what I thought about it, I told her I was despondent about Hollywood's lack of belief in our ability to enjoy anything we haven't already seen a dozen times. I expanded on the theme for a while but that was the gist. When I finished, there was a long silence, then she said, "Mmhmm," followed by another long silence. I asked if she had any further thoughts.
"That's pretty wet blankety," she said.
"What do you mean?" I said.
"You don't have to reinvent the wheel to make something fun for kids."
You have to take her response with a grain of salt because she was angry with me. I'd just revealed I'd made a logistical error that meant she would have to do several more hours of work that day than she'd originally intended. I tried to be upbeat and encouraging, so as not to get in further trouble. I said, "If you're going to let this drag you down, it's going to take twice as long", which I hoped would be helpful, although, even as I said it, I realised it wouldn't be.
Secretly, I felt her claim that you don't have to "reinvent the wheel" to make something fun for kids got things the wrong way round. Kids are entitled to movies that aspire to something more than just "fun". Making a movie kids will enjoy is so easy. Our kids have enjoyed every animated movie they've ever watched, except the ones that have been too scary, which, to be fair, is a lot of them. Nevertheless, surely even our kids deserve more respect than being force-fed big-budget rehashes based on formulae that have been made and remade and remade again. Knowing kids are going to like pretty much anything, why not try to give them and their parents something interesting or original?
No longer interested in my thoughts, Zanna went out of the room to ask the kids for theirs. She came back in and said, "If you think you'll get anything out of the kids, you won't." Taking that as a challenge, I went and asked them myself. When they more or less repeated what they'd told her, I said, "Okay, but ..." and told them the movie was effectively a remake of an adult movie, and asked if that changed the way they thought about it. They said yes.
I think the point is, never underestimate kids, although Zanna thinks the point is that a parent should never ask kids leading questions that will retrospectively ruin something they liked. I guess the two points aren't mutually exclusive.
The Bad Guys is in cinemas now.
'It is a project that was of great importance to Malcolm.'