The Unhealthy Guys is, in some ways, a reasonably typical animated household film. It’s bought a bunch of charming and snarky speaking animals, a vivid animation type, fast-paced and physics-defying motion sequences, and various jokes that may solely work on viewers members between the ages of two and 10. However The Unhealthy Guys can be a criminal offense comedy in the identical vein as Ocean’s Eleven, a movie that positively doesn’t qualify as “family-friendly,” if solely as a result of it “condones” legal habits.
By combining its conventional, kid-friendly components with a plot that was clearly impressed by a number of a lot edgier heist movies, The Unhealthy Guys finally ends up being an surprising mixture of two opposing genres. What’s much more shocking is the truth that The Unhealthy Guys principally succeeds at creating the identical form of magic present in so lots of the crime comedies that its makers clearly admire.
That’s to say that, whereas The Unhealthy Guys remains to be a movie that feels the necessity to ship an simply digestible ethical lesson, it’s additionally the form of film that’s keen to begin with a scene that pays clear homage to the prologue of Pulp Fiction.
Spherical up the same old suspects
Directed by Pierre Perifel and written by Etan Cohen, The Unhealthy Guys focuses on a bunch of anthropomorphic animals who’ve come to simply accept their place because the go-to villains of most tales. There’s Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell), Mr. Snake (Marc Maron), Mr. Piranha (Anthony Ramos), Mr. Shark (Craig Robinson), and Ms. Tarantula (Awkwafina), all of whom carry their distinctive abilities and personalities to their eccentric crime outfit.
The movie opens with Mr. Wolf and Mr. Snake sitting in a quiet metropolis diner, and it follows them as they argue for a number of minutes about their meals preferences earlier than making their means throughout the road to rob a close-by financial institution. Within the automobile chase that follows, Mr. Wolf breaks the fourth wall to introduce viewers to himself and the remainder of his crew members. It’s a enjoyable and well-constructed opening sequence, one that mixes components from movies like Out of Sight, Pulp Fiction, and Quick & Livid earlier than reaching its inevitable, deliberately ludicrous conclusion.
From there, The Unhealthy Guys follows its central crew as they try and steal an award from a gala occasion that’s meant to have fun a rich philanthropist named Rupert Marmalade IV (Richard Ayoade). Nonetheless, issues go improper when a second of heroism from Mr. Wolf ends in him and his crew being compelled to endure a collection of character rehabilitation workout routines, all of that are overseen by Marmalade.
The issues within the plan
It’s when the movie’s titular crew are below Marmalade’s watchful eye that The Unhealthy Guys comes dangerously near falling aside. The exams that the characters are put via within the movie all come throughout as uninspired, and Cohen’s script by no means takes the idea so far as it might. Happily, the movie doesn’t spend an excessive amount of of its runtime on The Unhealthy Guys’ stick with Marmalade, and shortly brings it to an finish with an efficient, if apparent, twist.
As soon as The Unhealthy Guys hits the plot beat in query (which gained’t be spoiled on this evaluation), it kind of kicks into excessive gear because it strikes into its third act. The movie begins to select up lots of the seeds that have been planted in its opening part and unfurls a string of fashionable and enjoyable motion sequences which can be punctuated by satisfying and genuinely intelligent plot twists. Taking a web page out of each nice heist film, the movie’s closing part is crammed with fixed shifts in energy and tongue-in-cheek cons, all of which assist to carry The Unhealthy Guys’ numerous plotlines and character arcs to their inevitable conclusions.
For his half, Perifel, who makes his directorial debut with The Unhealthy Guys, fills the movie with beautiful animated visuals and slick, well-edited motion sequences. The movie visually embraces its absurd premise, choosing a cartoonish and goofy type that makes it look decidedly totally different from lots of the high-budget CG-animated films which can be being launched these days. Perifel additionally provides the movie a heat shade palette that emphasizes its golds, reds, and blacks, which simply makes it all of the extra pleasing to take a look at.
The not-so-perfect con
Predictably, the movie’s family-friendly tone prevents its ending from current inside the identical form of ethical impartial floor that almost all nice crime films inhabit. In its concluding moments, The Unhealthy Guys goes out of its strategy to wrap up its storylines as neatly as attainable, which is a choice that not solely stretches the movie’s inside logic at factors but in addition robs a lot of its characters of their charming complexity.
However the twists that The Unhealthy Guys makes use of to carry its characters to their respective endpoints are all enjoyable and intelligent in their very own proper, which makes watching the movie’s closing 10 minutes unfold a satisfying expertise regardless of the compelled neatness of its conclusion. In different phrases, whereas the film definitely doesn’t pull off the right heist, it does succeed at doing most of what it units out to do.
The Bad Guys hits theaters in america on Friday, April 22.
Editors’ Alternative
