Review: 'The Bad Guys' is a smart, hilarious heist comedy for the junior set

There’s a simple idea behind the animated “The Bad Guys” — famously notorious creatures trying to be good — but if you think that’s all there is to this witty and inventive cartoon comedy, you’ll miss out on one of the funniest movies of the year.

The movie starts with two of those animals, the Big Bad Wolf (voiced by Sam Rockwell) and Snake (voiced by Marc Maron), shooting the breeze in a diner, like characters out of a Quentin Tarantino movie. Then the shot pans around the diner, and all the other patrons recoiling in terror at Wolf and Snake’s mere presence. 

Then they cross the street, meeting their cohorts — disguise expert Shark (voiced by Craig Robinson), supreme hacker Tarantula (voiced by Awkwafina) and slightly unhinged Piranha (voiced by Anthony Ramos) — to pull off yet another bank heist. Snake, by the way, is an ace safecracker, and Wolf, besides being the gang’s charismatic leader, is a deft pickpocket.

Retreating to their lair, the gang celebrates their latest success, watching the results on TV. That’s when they see the governor, Diane Foxington (yes, she’s a fox, in every sense of the word — and voiced by Zazie Beetz), calling Wolf’s crew a bunch of pathetic has-beens. Wolf is incensed, and decides the ultimate revenge would be to steal the famed Golden Dolphin statue, a trophy Gov. Foxington is set to award to their city’s greatest humanitarian, Professor Marmalade (voiced by Richard Ayoade). Snake signs on only because Marmalade is a guinea pig, his favorite food.

A funny thing happens during the robbery, though: Wolf gets a taste of what it’s like to be treated like a good guy — and the wag in his tail gives them away. The gang is caught, but before Gov. Foxington and the police chief (voiced by Alex Borstein) can send them to prison, Marmalade talks the governor into letting the gang live on his island compound, so he can try to get them to turn good.

Directing his first feature after years in DreamWorks’ animation department, Pierre Perifel captures the giddy spirit of these characters, in a story that’s a surprisingly workable mix of “Zootopia” and “Ocean’s Eleven.” In adapting Aaron Blabey’s graphic novels, screenwriter Etan Cohen (“Men in Black 3,” “Tropic Thunder,” “Idiocracy”) not only delivers solid gags, but a tight, economical script with tricky plot twists — nothing children in the audience won’t understand, but the kids who figure them out first will feel super-smart.

Among the voice actors, the revelation is Maron, who’s note-perfect as Snake, the most cynical member of the gang — a gruff, cantankerous voice that keeps “The Bad Guys” from slipping into phony melodramatics. He gives “The Bad Guys” the complexity a lesser animated movie would avoid, resulting in a movie kids and adults can enjoy in equal measure.  

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‘The Bad Guys’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, April 22, in theaters. Rated PG for action and rude humor. Running time: 100 minutes.