capsule : annoyingly unentertaining , obvious and paper - thin buddy / cop / drug / sexy - witness movie .
presence of director michael bay shows none of the talent he demonstrated in the rock .
i 've seen this movie already , i said , as i looked at the box art .
no , i have n't even seen a trailer for the movie ; i do n't even know what it 's about , but i can look at the way they 're promoting it , and i know i 've seen it already .
i thought : it 's about these two cops .
and they 're buddies , sort of .
they 're at each other 's throats a lot , but they really do like each other .
and everyone else in their department hates them 'cause they 're hot - shots .
and they have some kind of diametric opposition in their relationship .
and one day they 're in the middle of cop business as usual when they get mixed up in this plot that involves a really sadistic bad guy with lots of henchmen who can never hit anything with the billions of rounds of ammo they are always carrying .
and the bad guy is a drug lord .
and there 's a witness , and she 's this sexy thing who rubs both of them the wrong way .
and their supervisor wants their badges for breakfast when they blow up half the town bringing this guy down .
i only missed the bit about the badges .
the rest i got dead - on .
and i had n't even left the video store yet .
the cops in this movie are will smith and martin lawrence , and the bad guy is the immensely underutilized tcheky karyo .
smith plays a cop who has a trust fund and is thus not a cop for the money ; martin l .
is a family man ( shades of the now - tired lethal weapon dynamic here ) whose wife and he are at total odds .
this leads to some strained scenes about lawrence 's " not getting any " , and some totally unneccesary bits with him skulking around his own house , thinking his partner is now his wife 's " back door man " .
not funny ; tiresome .
bad boys gets some of its incredibly meager selling points from the presence of will smith and martin lawrence .
will smith is a natural , and i 'm happy to see him in movies like six degrees . . .
and men in black .
he 's funny and charming without trying to be ; he really does seem to be enjoying himself .
martin lawrence is a different story ; he 's so uptight and verbally constipated
that sitting through his improvised riffs are a trial .
movies like this are not about originality .
i know this .
they are about style and energy and synergy between actors .
i know this , too .
and yet , while watching bad boys , which its glamorous photography and impossibly exact stunt choreography , i felt fed up .
i 'd seen con air , which despite being completely implausible , was still great fun , because it tried however feebly to put some new life into the mix .
bad boys is a dry run -- and overlong , too , clocking in at just over two hours with a lot more by - play than i felt could be justified .
i could write this movie .
you could write this movie .
many people have .
many people will continue to write this movie , over and over again .
other people will buy it from them , and make it , and we will pay money to see it .
more the fools we all .
in a terrifyingly prescient line from his book
a scanner darkly , phil k .
dick once mused that the mcdonaldburger ( as he called it ) would eventually eclipse money as the token of cultural and financial exchange .
one day we will all just sit in our living rooms and sell the same burger back and forth to each other .
the same could be said about this movie .
i have the sinking feeling we 're going to see it again .
soon .
Output: N