OLD MEN WILL BE BOYS

Opening this weekend:

Bad Boys: Ride or Die--Walking out of the theater after this fourth film in the Miami cop franchise, I was reminded by a friend that the original was released in 1995. Strange as it may seem, Bad Boys is almost thirty years old.

My first reaction was envy at how well the stars, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, appear to have aged. These can no longer properly be called bad boys; as a title, something more like Grumpy Old Men seems more in order at this point. Yet neither actor looks ridiculous going through their action paces.

But it also strikes me that, to have lasted anywhere near this long, these movies must have meant something to audiences. Using the most routine, generic, by-the-numbers car chase and explosion formula, these four flicks, spaced out over decades, have kept people coming back to theaters.

The reason, of course, is the bickering. Directed by the Belgian filmmaking team of Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, Ride or Die opens with Mike Lowrey (Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Lawrence) kvetching at each other on their way Mike's wedding. There's a vague attempt to flip the script (by Chris Bremner and Will Beall) by giving Marcus a health scare which turns him into the daredevil of the duo and Mike into the worrywart. But the result is basically the same, with our heroes squabbling like an old married couple as they attempt to redeem the reputation of their late boss Captain Howard (Joe Pantoliano).

The Captain (who appears, via some visions and prerecorded cautionary messages) has been posthumously framed by drug dealers, led by a quite hissable Eric Dane. Jacob Scipio returns from the third film--over which Ride or Die felt to me like an improvement--as Mike's hunky convict son Armando.

In what appears to be a sheepish, pre-emptive wink at the audience, Smith gets slapped at one point in Ride or Die. Still, even with that almost fourth-wall gag, it wasn't until near the end, when an enormous albino alligator threatens Marcus, that it occurred to me what the Bad Boys flicks have come to resemble in tone: the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby Road pictures. But that series of seven goofy, easygoing movies started in 1940 and ended in 1962. So for longevity, Bad Boys already has it beat.