Michael Bay directs Will Smith, Martin Lawrence and Téa Leoni in the buddy cop action comedy about partners with 3 days to recover a stolen heroin haul. 

I went to see this at the cinema with my Dad when it first came out and we had a blast. I watched this with my boy Davey many times and had mindless, beer fuelled larks. I watched it with my wife just now and all of Bad Boys cracks and problems and pig headedness overwhelmed me. She hated it. I found it hard to defend. She’s no fan of Bay-hem, even though shimmering heat of the visuals and sultry persuasion of the soundtrack is glossily seductive. But the action is erratic and poorly told. Moments of conflict arise from nowhere. Allegedly the script was terrible when production began, meaning this is often a patchwork of nonsensical improvised scenes, obviously rewritten tangents that suggest Leoni’s witness was originally a call girl but either her or the studio balked at the idea, and trailer moments that work great out of context but do nothing for the watery plot. A lot of the time Will Smith stoically stands next to Martin Lawrence, while the more annoying star burbles on ridiculously. Grating and sloppy… it is still big, dumb fun. But if you don’t have a nostalgia for its place in the mid nineties cultural landscape you’ll struggle to key into it. I’ll save Bad Boys II for myself though.

6