Thursday, July 19, 2007

Yet another Bad Boys 2 reference?

If you don't read C.H.U.D. daily, you should. The guys are truly fans first, and critics second, yet still tend to remain a little more level-headed (if not more cynical) than the Harry Crew at AICN. If you haven't gathered from my constant linkage to them, I'm a huge fan of both sites.

Right now, C.H.U.D. is running their list of their Fifty Guiltiest Pleasures. Today, Day 14, gives us Demolition Man and Bad Boys 2. Just what does Devin have to say about it?

Bad Boys II is maybe my ultimate guilty pleasure because I hate movies as stupid as this, and I definitely hate movies as overindulgent as this – just when you think the film is over our leads head to Cuba to decimate a chunk of that country. Actually, I take back the claim that Bad Boys II is stupid: that would indicate there is some sort of thought process behind the film, no matter how insipid. Bad Boys II is pure chaos corralled into cinematic form, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing… except one great fucking time at the movies.

People say that Transformers was the movie Michael Bay was born to make, but I really think that film was Bad Boys II. He takes action choreography to such a new level of amorality and wastefulness – just imagine the costs of the first chase scene, when he even throws a fucking boat into the mix! – that you feel like this is the action spectacle Caligula would have made, except maybe with more horse fucking or something. Bad Boys II is sensation without sense, a film whose sensibility is hyperviolence thats so hyper it's no longer cartoonish but just sort of ugly, a juggernaut of metal on metal and director on audience.

Signature Moment: Will Smith and Martin Lawrence carjack Dan Marino and then engage in a high speed chase with a van that is spitting corpses at them. Dead bodies slam into the windshield and get splattered under the wheels of the car and you realize how unlikely it is that any chase scene will ever top this one in terms of sheer disregard for basic humanity.
Doesn't Michael Bay just look like the kind of guy who would make these movies? I love him.

To give you guys a good example of the sort of sick fan-wit that permeates the styles of most of the contributors, check out this standard bit from Nick. He's writing about Guilty Pleasure #32, Kiss of Death (yes, the David Caruso Kiss of Death):

Signature moment: Helen Hunt, who at the time was still mad about Paul Reiser, is living life on the outside while beau David Caruso counts out his days in the hoosegow. Her reward: slamming death from an oncoming truck. She takes its grille, its engine block, the whole damn load and she takes it hard. Somehow it's heartening to see Helen Hunt get devastated by a truck in the first act of a film. I envision an alternate cut of Twister featuring this intro, followed by two hours Bill Paxton banging the daylight out of Jami Gertz and cranking up some Loverboy on his boom box to drown out the cries of the tornadoes.
Fucking genius. No lie.

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