The good news for fans of "The Bad Guys" is the new sequel is stellar. But that's because a good portion is actually set in - are you kidding us? - outer space. "The Bad Guys 2" has clearly lost its moorings.
Returning director Pierre Perifel, writers Yoni Brenner and Etan Cohen and the same voice cast have done what all sequels do these days - amp it all up like everyone is on molly, try to hit the same emotional notes and layer an insane plot with the fate of the world at stake. It's hard to watch a franchise drift so expensively and pointlessly in Earth's orbit.
The gang is all back: Sam Rockwell as Mr. Wolf, Marc Maron as safe-cracker Mr. Snake, Craig Robinson as master-of disguise Mr. Shark, Anthony Ramos as Mr. Piranha and Awkwafina as hacker Ms. Tarantula. We left them in the last movie walking out of prison early after good behavior and trying to turn their back on bad-hood.
It's not that easy since would-be employers these days want to know about gaps in their job experience - they were robbing banks, after all - workplace trust issues and salary expectations. No one wants to hire a bunch of ex-cons.
"Anyone who wants to change has to start somewhere," Mr. Wolf, pushing the George Clooney-like charm offensive, begs one dubious interviewer. "I'm just asking for a chance."
A life on the straight-and-narrow is hard for four of the former baddies, but not Maron - so perfectly cast as the grouchy, self-loathing snake. Now he spends his days doing Vinyasa yoga, listening to Sabrina Carpenter's "Espresso," telling people "namaste" and sips wheatgrass kombucha with dandelion. He's even more irritating.
Soon all five are caught in a series of traps and double-crosses by a new robbery crew - Danielle Brooks´ lollipop-licking venomous snow leopard, Maria Bakalova´s Bulgarian wild boar engineer and Natasha Lyonne´s wry raven, using her same vocal tick as on "Poker Face." These dames have a plan to get very rich using a substance known as MacGuffinite, a clever - or lazy - joke on the object that everyone wants in a movie like this, which drives the plot.
There's soon a trip to a Mexican wrestling festival and then a wedding needs crashing in order to gain control over a rocket owned by an Elon Musk-like billionaire - voice acted by Colin Jost - who runs the MoonX company. Then the rocket has to be stopped before a gadget aboard creates a "24-carat catastrophe."
The animation is amazingly kinetic and with no corners cut, from tiny bugs illuminated in a light beam at night to the bumpy way a truck moves on the highway. The franchise's love of vroooming and fishtailing Looney Tunes-like car chases stays intact, as does the wavy green air farts that emanate from Piranha.
Based on Aaron Blabey´s popular graphic book series, the first movie in 2022 drove hard into the nature of good and evil - like asking if DNA determines behavior - as our heroes whipsawed between heroic and villainous, to the glee of all the kiddies in the theater. "We may be bad, but we´re so good at it," was the slogan. It was all nicely set against a zombie guinea pig uprising.
This time the writers have just given up on what side of the ethical divide their anti-heroes are on. "Are we bad again?" ask the confused piranha. Replies Mr. Wolf: "I get it. We're all over the place." Left unexplored is the concept of doing wrong for a greater good, and can being bad be excused if it stops a worse badness? "What if the bad life was your best life?" asks one of the newcomers. (Another thing to chew on: If "The Bad Guys 2" is a worse sequel, does that make "The Bad Guys" good?)
When we say the gang is all here, they're all here without any editing: Zazie Beetz returns as Gov. Diane Foxington; Alex Borstein comes back as the top cop; even the kitten from the first film meows in the second. So is Richard Ayoade as Professor Marmalade, the evil guinea pig who is now surprisingly swole and tatted up in prison. He threatens again to steal the show and may if there's a "The Bad Guys 3." (There's going to be a "The Bad Guys 3.")
The joy of "The Bad Guys" was that it was a respectful send-up of the movies of Quentin Tarantino and caper flicks like "Ocean´s 11." This time, the "Fast & Furious" series gets mocked, as does "Silence of the Lambs," "Men in Black" and maybe "Moonraker," which is now 46 years old. But the subversion is painfully flat now: The first film in the franchise would have laughed at one climactic line in the second: "We've got one shot to save the world. Let's make it count!"
The three new villains may be a touch too much for younger viewers - the violence seems darker and more volcanic this time - but there's a very loud soundtrack that includes Busta Rhymes, Sofi Tukker and Rag´n´Bone Man.
So what does it all mean? It means the folks behind "The Bad Guys 2" reunited for a shot to push the franchise into exciting areas, but - c'mon, everyone - they didn't make it count.
"The Bad Guys 2," a Universal Pictures release in theaters Friday, is rated PG for "action/mild violence, rude humor, and language." Running time: 104 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.