Bad Boys

Is this supposed to be an African American male version of “Cagney and Lacey”? I seem to recall that one of them was a trust-fund cop teamed up with the working class family one. Here, Will Smith is the suave and confident “Mike” who works with “Marcus” (Martin Lawrence) for the narcotics department. After an audacious raid on the police station relieves it’s evidence room of millions of dollars worth of heroin, it falls to this intrepid pair to to find out just who pinched it. How hard can it be? That’s a massive amount of drugs so only a few can deal with it. Well their contacts quickly provide them with a smoking gun, but not until it’s started piling up the bodies and meant that “Julie” (Téa Leoni) has to be put into witness protection. To further complicate thing, she thinks “Marcus” is “Mike” and so he has to play along and that means move into his pal’s apartment to the chagrin of both “Mike” and his own wife “Theresa” (Theresa Randle) to whom he spins a yarn about going undercover. What now ensues is one of those buddy comedies that has it’s moments, but is let down by some really banal writing and some baddies that are about as menacing as yesterday’s cold pizza. The last twenty minutes or so are quite lively, with loads of pyrotechnics and proof that a Porsche Boxster can do 0-60 in 4 seconds but otherwise this is more of a charm-free cousin of “Beverly Hills Cop” (1984) with some more earthy language. To it’s credit, it is the only time I’ve ever seen Leoni present us with anything remotely personable, but thirty years on the whole thing has dated and lost whatever lustre it had back when the semi-comic Lawrence was at the top of his game and the “Fresh Prince” was, well, fresh. It’s all watchable enough, but nothing especially original.