YMMV / Bad Boys II

• Awesome Music: Say what you will about the film, but it had a sweet soundtrack.
• Critical Dissonance: The film received particularly bad reviews from critics, with a Rotten Tomatoes score of a 23%. What was the audience score, you might ask? 79%.
• Critic-Proof: Predates Michael Bay's Transformers Film Series in this regard. It's the definition of a popcorn flick, and despite negative reactions from critics, was a smash hit at the box office. (Though this appears to have soon worn off; one Hot Fuzz commentary has Quentin Tarantino discussing how at the movie's premiere he set up a booth selling both Bad Boys II and Point Break (1991), and absolutely no one wanted Bad Boys II, even when he started offering it for free.)
• Ending Fatigue: The film would seem to logically end around the time when the team captures Tapia's drug and money shipments, gaining enough evidence to have him convicted. Instead, Tapia kidnaps Sid and flees to Cuba, causing the film to go on for another half-hour and leading to a climax where Mike, Marcus and a few other cops go to Cuba, hook up with local resistance fighters, and assault Tapia's heavily fortified mansion. Even this takes longer than it should with the gun battle leading to an extended car chase and ending with a standoff outside of Guantanamo Bay. However, one may feel MUCH more satisfied to see him get blown up by a mine rather than just getting arrested.
• Ham and Cheese: Jordi Mollà is visibly having a blast while making this film. His redub of the character for the Spanish dub was even crazier.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The film features a whole scene focused on a dead woman's large, fake breasts. Michael Bay's later film Pain & Gain features a woman's corpse getting identified by her breast implants, which is based on a true story. Both scenes are played for laughs.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Shit just got REAL."
  • For a few months after the film, "Woo-sah", combined with the ear massage, became a popular saying when someone became angry or agitated.
  • "You motherfuckers need Jesus!"
• Narm Charm: There's much more of this than in the first film. For instance:
  Mook: Who that? Who in my house?!
  Mike: I'm the Devil! Who's asking?!
  Mook: The Devil is not welcome hee-ah (here)!
• Older Than They Think: This is the origin of the phrase "Shit just got real", but that quip is occasionally better known for its use in Problem Sleuth nowadays.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: The companion game Miami Takedown is absolutely horrible. Cheap mechanics, lazy design, clunky and stupid AI. They couldn't even be bothered to get Will Smith and Martin Lawrence to reprise their characters.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • Megan Fox is an extra in a club scene, where she can be seen dancing for a split second wearing a cowboy hat and bikini. According to Fox, she was only fifteen years old at the time and was put on the dance floor because she was too young to sit at the bar.
  • One of the Klansman is Michael Shannon (the one that yelled out "We got our rights!"). Never thought you'd see General Zod as a Klansman, did ya?
• Shocking Moments: Michael Bay found a way to introduce a boat into a car chase (of course, the boat was being towed, and even then, it got managed to be ripped off and slam into a few other cars).
  Capt. Howard: 22 cars and a boat, totaled? How do you sink a boat?
• Signature Scene: The Reggie scene. That is all.
• Vindicated by History: On its first release it got torn to shreds by critics, and while the audience response was good enough for it to be a box-office hit, it still wasn't really that great. Nowadays, while it's still considered something of a Sophomore Slump next to the first and third films, it's nonetheless much more fondly-remembered than it was on its initial release, with many now perfectly happy to enjoy it as a brainless action movie. It also helps that in retrospect it actually comes across quite restrained next to Bay's work on the Transformers Film Series. And also helped by the fact it was fondly referenced by Hot Fuzz.

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