Cadavers, Ferraris, big guns, bigger egos

"Bad Boys II" is the biggest, dumbest, loudest, fastest and freakiest thrill ride of the summer. For many, this might be a turnoff, for yours truly, it's a blessing, albeit a slightly mixed one.\nThe film essentially picks up where its predecessor left off, but it takes a completely different tack in allowing its narrative, and I take great liberties in stating that it has one, to unfurl. "Bad Boys II" is about as deep as a kiddie pool; only the urine's been replaced by rivers of blood and the comedy stretches well beyond the beginning stages of toilet humor escalating into full-on tirades concerning homosexuality, necrophilia, rat-on-rat fucking and overprotective parenting of the foul-mouthed variety.\nWill Smith and Martin Lawrence return as the titular "Bad Boys." What little story there is concerns Marcus Burnett's (Lawrence) desire to transfer his pudgy ass to a safer police district outside Miami -- understandable, as he wants to protect both himself and his family. His partner, Mike Lowrey (Smith), is up to the same old tricks -- shooting perps with reckless abandon by day and chasing skirt by night, only this time, the skirt belongs to Marcus's DEA agent of a kid sister, Sydney (the fetching Gabrielle Union). \nTogether, the trio is looking to bust a hilariously psychotic, Cuban E dealer by the name of Johnny Tapia (Spanish actor Jordi Mollà, best known to American audiences for his solid work in the late Ted Demme's modern masterpiece, "Blow"). Meanwhile, Tapia is having problems with a rival drug peddler (a prototypically bizarre Peter Stormare). Reams of corpses amass in ways both new (a baddie does a back flop on a land mine, a slew of henchmen are vanquished via a remote-controlled car bomb and a cadaver has its head knocked off by a car tire) and old (one villain is dispatched in an abbreviated homage to the conclusion of "Scarface"). All the while, Smith (who's only been better in "Ali") and Lawrence (funnier here than he's been in ages) chuckle and jibe through the morbidities.\n"Bad Boys II" is a return to form for director Michael Bay, who after having taken potshots for his somewhat sudsy epics, "Armageddon" and "Pearl Harbor," revitalizes the slickly gritty ultra-violence of his best work, "The Rock." In watching the flick, it appears he's been holed-up in a bunker somewhere cribbing old John Woo movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger's '80s schlockfest "Commando" and Brian DePalma's aforementioned gangster classic. Bay's also picked-up a few newer, slicker tricks over the years. His camera careens through the tanned legs of drugged-up starlets in a strange hybrid Busby Berkley and Aaron Spelling. He's also ripped-off the digitally- aided pans and tilts seen and beloved in David Fincher's "Fight Club," and unbelievably, gone about improving them. Sure, the guy's a hack, but he's orchestrating mayhem with such zeal that it hardly matters.\nAs is, "Bad Boys II" is a simultaneously brilliant and mind-numbingly stupid two and a half hour exercise in excess -- nothing more, nothing less.