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<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nIn\npreparation for \u201cBad Boys for Life,\u201d I watched the previous two \u201cBad Boys\u201d\nfilms from 1995 and 2003. This research coincided with the \u201cJeopardy!\u201d Greatest\nof All Time tournament, which featured especially hard clues designed to\nchallenge the brainiac players. It was an interesting balance of opposite ends\nof the IQ spectrum. When \u201cJeopardy!\u201d had my brain short-circuiting, I turned on\n\u201cBad Boys\u201d to cool it down. When \u201cBad Boys\u201d had my brain flatlining, I turned\non \u201cJeopardy!\u201d to bring it back to life. By the end of the week two things were\nclear: that I should never get within 500 feet of the \u201cJeopardy!\u201d set, and that\nthe \u201cBad Boys\u201d franchise was just as explosive and dumb as I expected from\npre-\u201cTransformers\u201d Michael Bay. The new film isn\u2019t directed by Bay, but new\nhelmers Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah are clearly following his blueprint very\nclosely, for better or worse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Will\nSmith and Martin Lawrence are back as Miami detectives Mike Lowery and Marcus\nBurnett, respectively. Mike wants to keep chasing bad guys for all eternity,\nwhile Marcus wants to retire to spend time with his family, which now includes\na grandchild. And of course their captain (Joe Pantoliano) just wants them both\nto stop giving him ulcers. Imprisoned cartel queen Isabel (Kate del Castillo)\nand her son Armando (Jacob Scipio) have plans to see that these people don\u2019t\nget what they want. During Isabel\u2019s inevitable escape, she comes across an\noverturned fruit cart. Doesn\u2019t this movie know that it\u2019s supposed to show the\nsenseless destruction of the fruit cart during a chase scene? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
An\nassassination attempt on Mike leaves him unable to pursue Isabel and Armando\nhimself. But he can consult with an upstart unit led by potential love interest\nRita (Paola Nu\u00f1ez). Mike clashes with the younger officers in the unit (Charles\nMelton, Vanessa Hudgens, and Alexander Ludwig), who mean well but aren\u2019t\nproactive (i.e. ready to go into a situation with guns a-blazing) like him.\nWhat he really needs is Marcus back, but his old partner has committed himself\nto non-violence. This obstacle lasts for about a scene and a half before Mike\nhas Marcus do some mental gymnastics to make him reckless and deadly again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\nMike\/Marcus relationship is given a moderate amount of attention, though\nthankfully not so much that Martin Lawrence is allowed to really annoy me like\nin the first movie. The relationship between Mike and Rita and her team is\ngiven minimal attention, mostly limited to arguments over the team\u2019s \u201cobserve,\ndon\u2019t get involved\u201d position (Vanessa Hudgens is not in the movie nearly enough\nto justify her third-from-the-top billing). There\u2019s a lot of development given\ntoward the relationship between Mike and the villains at the end. The storyline\nculminates in a tease for another sequel, which makes me wonder if the studio\u2019s\nmarketing team regrets calling the third movie \u201cBad Boys for Life\u201d when saving\nthe title for the fourth movie and calling it \u201cBad Boys 4 Life\u201d makes much more\nsense. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Your\nopinion of \u201cBad Boys for Life\u201d will depend heavily on how you feel about movies\nthat pride themselves on being dumb, but fun. Here\u2019s a test: there\u2019s a scene\nwhere the characters go into a showdown at a Mexican church filled with stained\nglass windows. Are you rubbing your hands in anticipation of all the glass\nbreaking? If so, this is the movie for you. If not, you probably won\u2019t like the\nglass breaking or all the shooting and explosions that take place long after\nthe movie has run out of glass to break. I\u2019m of the opinion that the action\nshould last only as long as there\u2019s glass to break. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Grade: C<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBad Boys for Life\u201d is rated R for\nstrong bloody violence, language throughout, sexual references and brief drug use.\nIts running time is 123 minutes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Bob Garver In preparation for \u201cBad Boys for Life,\u201d I watched the previous two \u201cBad Boys\u201d films from 1995 and 2003. This research coincided with the \u201cJeopardy!\u201d Greatest… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":45814,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45813"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}