Time for another unorthodox heist film, so soon after the anti-heist of The Duke, and I was quite torn initially going into this. On one hand, it’s the latest DreamWorks animated release, and if nothing else, they also manage to provide interesting material to dig into, even if it doesn’t always hold up alongside its competition. But on the other hand, we have writer Etan Cohen, whose rather inconsistent track record reached a serious nadir a few years back with his work on the unbearably smug Holmes & Watson. As much as I love heist films, this really could go either way and… well, it kinda goes for both of them?
Let’s start with the film’s visuals: This looks absolutely amazing. Pierre Perifel’s first spin in the director’s chair, who's been working with DreamWorks on-and-off since the first Kung Fu Panda, shows him continuing the company pedigree for eclectic animation. There’s a lot of cel shading on display here, giving the 3D animation a more traditional or possibly even comic book style that manages to synthesise a lot of the studio's prior dabblings into a single aesthetic. It really pops during the high-speed action scenes, and the character designs are solid too… even if there’s a bit of a question mark concerning them as part of this larger world.
After what happened with Daisy Quokka, it’s not like I want to drastically over-think the logistics of a film that features talking animals… but there’s something off about the presentation here, beyond the visuals. The titular Bad Guys are a gang of anthropomorphic animal criminals, but they exist in a world largely populated by humans, while there are also other animals that aren’t humanised. There’s a plot point involving a meteorite crashing into the Earth that gives off strange energy frequencies, which could have gone some way to explain why guinea pigs are both kept in cages and considered one of the greatest philanthropists in the world in the form of Professor Marmalade (Richard Ayoade being delightful as always), but nope; it’s entirely unexplained.
It's a bit of a weird sticking point, considering so much of the film’s bigger ideas (underneath all the clever-clever heist capering) has to do with prejudices and the assumptions placed on ‘good’ and ‘bad’ guys. It operates a lot like Zootopia or Back To The Outback, as it shows Sam Rockwell’s Wolf struggling between embracing the Big Bad stereotypes thrown at him, and aspiring to something more. While this doesn’t go nearly as deep into the topic as something like Zootopia, which got legitimately uncomfortable at points, Cohen’s scripting shows enough understanding of the subjects being gestured at to make some decent points. And what’s more, he manages to make them without perpetually patting himself on the back for doing so.
But honestly, whatever social commentary it tries to make about the effects of societal prejudice, and even dipping into some aspects of mistreatment by law enforcement, ultimately feel secondary to what the film really has going for it. Put simply, if Sony ever decides to give another go at a Sly Cooper movie, this is what it should look like. The heist side of things is quite entertaining, as are the characters involved (Rockwell is still awesome, Marc Maron as Snake does very well, Zazie Beetz as Gov. Foxington gives some welcome Carmelita vibes, and Alex Borstein as the very Trunchbull-looking police chief fits the bill beautifully), and it’s got some actual smarts behind its bendier plot twists. All the planning and eventual execution look as well-tuned and finessed as the animation used to depict it.
While unfortunately not quite as clever as it intends to be with its thornier subject matter, it’s aided by how the animation and (in a highly relieving development) the writer in particular aren’t so insecure about that as to sabotage what they do manage to get right. It’s DreamWorks getting back to their ‘people aren’t just what’s on the surface’ roots, with a visual style that stands out from an awful lot of more recent animated family films, a remarkably smooth pace, and a soundtrack from Daniel Pemberton that is cooler than an ice bucket.
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