Bad Boys (1995)    Columbia/Action-Comedy    RT: 119 minutes    Rated R (intense violent action, pervasive strong language)    Director: Michael Bay    Screenplay: Michael Barrie, Jim Mulholland and Doug Richardson    Music: Mark Marcina    Cinematography: Howard Atherton    Release date: April 7, 1995 (US)    Cast: Martin Lawrence, Will Smith, Tea Leoni, Tcheky Karyo, Theresa Randle, Joe Pantoliano, Marg Helgenberger, Nestor Serrano, Julio Oscar Mechoso, Kevin Corrigan, Michael Imperioli, Anna Thomson, Marc Macaulay, Frank John Hughes, Vic Manni, Karen Alexander, Saverio Guerra, Ralph Gonzalez, Emmanuel Xuereb, Tiffany Samuels, Cory Hodges, Scott Cumberbatch, John Spider Salley, Shaun Toub, Kim Coates, Michael Taliferro, Lisa Boyle.    Box Office: $65.8M (US)/$141.4M (World)

Rating: ***

 Before his name became synonymous with the decline of American cinema, Michael Bay directed music videos for Meat Loaf, Tina Turner, Wilson Phillips, Young M.C. and Donny Osmond.  He made his feature film debut with Bad Boys, an action-comedy starring Martin Lawrence (House Party) and Will Smith (The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) as two wild Miami cops. It’s a slick, stylish affair that rips off virtually every buddy cop movie that came before it- e.g. 48 Hrs, Beverly Hills Cop 1 & 2, Lethal Weapon 1-3, Midnight Run and too many others to name.

 Its plot about a criminal mastermind stealing a huge quantity of heroin from the police station is recycled material. In addition to the usual shoot-outs, explosions and car chases, there are scenes of the partners joking, arguing, shouting and trying to one-up each other. There’s an ill-tempered commanding officer (Pantoliano, The Matrix) who spends most of his time chewing out Lawrence and Smith for their reckless behavior. There’s also an Internal Affairs cop (Helgenberger, CSI) out to get our heroes for no good reason. In other words, Bad Boys is business as usual.

 Here’s what happens. Drug kingpin Fouchet (Karyo, La Femme Nikita) and his gang successful steal $100 million worth of heroin from a supposedly secure vault in the police station. The cops who originally seized the drugs, Marcus Burnett (Lawrence) and Mike Lowrey (Smith), are assigned to the case. They have five days to recover the heroin or else IA will shut down their unit for good. Lowrey asks an informant/friend, a high-priced “escort” named Max (model Alexander), for help. She ends up being murdered by Fouchet. The problem is there’s a witness, Max’s friend Julie (Leoni, The Naked Truth), and she’ll only deal with Lowrey. For reasons not worth going into, Burnett poses as Lowrey. More about that shortly. It comes down to this: the guys have to protect Julie while trying to find out where Fouchet’s big deal is going down.

 As I mentioned earlier, Burnett has to pose as Lowrey which means Lowrey has to be Burnett. Burnett is a family man with a wife and three children. Lowrey is a player with a trust fund. While Burnett moves into Lowrey’s lavish apartment with Julie (protective custody), Lowrey moves into Burnett’s house with his family. This, of course, leads to all sorts of complications, lies, mix-ups and misunderstandings. Yep, it’s yet another one of those situations where everybody is too dense to see that things don’t add up. It could easily be resolved if somebody thought to reveal a key piece of information that would clear everything up. Instead, they act like idiots and let the situation get worse. It’s what’s known as an “Idiot Plot”. It’s so ungainly in Bad Boys, you just want to smack some sense into the characters. It isn’t as funny as Bay and the writers think it is.

 I have mixed feelings about the pairing of Lawrence and Smith. Their characters, having been friends since childhood, know each other extremely well to the point where they have their own dialogue and in-jokes. It would have been nice if the writers let us in the jokes by letting us get to know them as well. Here’s what we do know. Lowrey comes from money. He has a large trust fund judging by his expensive tastes in cars, clothes and apartments. Burnett is having marital problems. His wife (Randle, Beverly Hills Cop III) thinks he spends too much time on the job; consequently, he’s not getting any. Both of them are loud, profane, reckless and destructive. That’s about it as far as character development goes. In their defense, both actors are funny and work well together. They’re no Nick Nolte/Eddie Murphy or Mel Gibson/Danny Glover but it’s still a pretty good pairing.

 Even with its shortcomings, Bad Boys is still an entertaining albeit routine action-comedy. It has some nicely mounted action scenes including a huge climax at an airfield. One of the car chases has our heroes, with civilian witness in tow, driving a truck filled with canisters of ether. You know this means to expect one or several explosions. There’s plenty of shooting and violence in Bad Boys, all of it edited in the customary frenetic style of producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson (Beverly Hills Cop I & II). Miami looks especially good with its sunny skies and glitzy nightlife. It’s a slick, handsome movie. The aesthetics are a pretty good cover for the script deficiencies.

 Bad Boys is as dumb and silly as most of the action-comedies so popular with audiences in the 80s and 90s. Like some of them, it works in spite of not having a single original idea in its empty head. It’s kind of fun actually, loud, VERY LOUD, but fun.