The Will Smith movie Roger Ebert hated with a passion: “Everybody involved needs to do some community service”
It’s not inconceivable that Will Smith will be able to rehabilitate and rebuild his career in the wake of his infamous slap across Chris Rock’s chops at the Academy Awards, even if it’s unlikely he’ll ever be restored to his former glories as the single biggest star in Hollywood.
For almost two decades, the former sitcom favourite earned his ‘King of Summer’ nickname by headlining a succession of unqualified box office smash hits. Even when he was involved in a high-profile flop, with Seven Pounds and Collateral Beauty coming to mind, the next win was always around the corner.
He’s the only actor in history to have nine consecutive films earn upwards of $100 million in ticket sales, a winning run that began with I, Robot and concluded with After Earth. In fact, excluding his cameo appearance as himself in Kevin Smith’s Jersey Girl, that record extends to 11, and Roger Ebert absolutely hated one of them.
Michael Bay’s Bad Boys was the blockbuster that launched Smith’s big-screen career, establishing him as a leading man and action hero. The buddy cop action flick had plenty of sequel potential, but it would be eight years before the band got back together. When they did, Ebert was appalled by what he saw.
Describing Bad Boys II as a “bloated, unpleasant assembly-line extrusion in which there are a lot of chases and a lot of killings and explosions,” the critic was shocked by the levels of wanton violence, collateral damage, and dead bodies Smith and co-star Martin Lawrence left in their wake. In his defence, it’s arguably the ultimate depiction of ‘Bayhem’, which means just as many people loved it as loathed it.
Continuing his evisceration of the R-rated actioner, Ebert suggested that Bad Boys II “has a carelessness that shows contempt for its audience” before describing a third-act sequence – in which the heroes destroy a favela by driving straight through it without a care for the residents of their wellbeing – as “sickening.”
Obviously, Ebert wasn’t thrilled with Smith’s return to the role of Mike Lowrey, and his indignation went so far that he believed everyone involved in making Bad Boys II owed some sort of debt to society for inflicting unsuspecting audiences with wall-to-wall carnage for 147 nauseating minutes.
Putting the exclamation point on his apoplectic reaction to Bad Boys II, Ebert was adamant that “everybody involved in this project needs to do some community service.” It’s a polarising film, pretty much for the exact issues he had with it. Plenty of action aficionados adore the movie because of its kitchen sink approach, whereas those who don’t want to have their senses assaulted for almost two and a half hours were exhausted long before the credits rolled.
