Bad Boys For Life Review: 7 Ups & 3 Downs
It's a January miracle.
Most fans of the Bad Boys franchise had given up hope long ago that a third film would ever materialise, and yet, some 17 years (!) after the ludicrously bombastic Bad Boys II rolled into cinemas, Bad Boys for Life has finally been released.
With its questionable mid-January release date, middling series of trailers, near-total lack of buzz, and reviews that dropped mere days before release, it was easy to be skeptical about the movie going in.
And so, it's an absolute shocker to see that critics have largely been broadly praising Bad Boys for Life as an unexpectedly entertaining threequel, scoring by far the strongest Tomatometer score of the series as a result - higher than the first two combined, in fact.
While those who love the previous movies may miss the presence of Michael Bay's outlandish action and general excess, this more restrained film is also a more streamlined and broadly entertaining action flick that gives Will Smith and Martin Lawrence their most compelling dramatic material of the series.
It's hardly high-art and won't do much for the uninitiated, but for long-time fans of these movies and these characters, it's a shockingly decent, nostalgia-soaked reunion...