Bad Boys (1995) with Laci Mosley

Bad Girls Caitlin and Jamie plus special guest Laci Mosley chat about Bad Boys (1995). 

(This episode contains spoilers)

For Bechdel bonuses, sign up for our Patreon at patreon.com/bechdelcast.

Follow @DivaLaci on on Twitter. While you're there, you should also follow @BechdelCast, @caitlindurante and @jamieloftusHELP 

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
On the Dog Cast, the questions asked if movies have
women in them? Are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands?
Do they have individualism? The patriarchy? Zef in best start
changing it with the beck Del Cast. Bad boys, bad boys.
What you're gonna do, What you're gonna do when they
come for you? But wait, hang on, sorry, let me

(00:24):
let me start again. Bad girls, bad girls. What you're
gonna do, You're gonna do when? Sorry, God, Kalen, I
would I just like I was going to join him,
but then you were doing such a good job to im,
like she's she's got it, she's star is born. Yeah,
that was your d Okay. So here we are. We

(00:49):
are the bad girls. Where the Yeah, we're the bad
girls this time. Um, but we're here to talk about
the bad boys because we weren't given it a choice, right, Um.
Welcome to the Becktel Cast. My name is Jamie Loftus,
my name is Caitlin Darante, and we are the bad
Girls and that's what we're gonna When Alison Bechtel inevitably
sues us will change the name of the podcast to

(01:10):
bad Girls. I'm honestly surprised that the sequel for Bad
Boys for Life is actually not a reboot that's an
all female like Bad Girls. It's the trend. It's the trend.
But um, you know they had to make Cops cool
again at the politically advantageous time to reboot this franchise.
Can you do? And I mean, plus the chemistry between

(01:33):
Will Smith and Martin Laurence. I mean I want Martin
Lawrence to get as many checks as humanly possible. I
love him so much. Oh man, Martin Lawrence formative crush.
Really yes? But wait, what is the podcast? I forget?
We talked about the representation of women in movies and
how it usually doesn't do a very good job. I
don't see this movie. Yeah, because we we just talked

(01:56):
about men for two minutes. Um. We use the Bechdel
test as a jumping off point for discussion. The Bechdel
test being a media metric invented by Alison Bechdel, sometimes
called the Bechdel Wallace test that requires that two female
identifying characters with names talk to each other about something
other than a man. Can this movie do it? I

(02:18):
was honestly on the edge of my seat. I mean,
we'll talk about it, but there's a conversation to be had.
They get I was shocked. Um. And so to all
those haters out there who are like, do they just
spin an hour or trying to figure out if it
passes the Bechdel test, No, we have we know going
in we usually have the answer. Yeah. So we're talking

(02:41):
about Bad Boys. We have a guest. Is this time
three third time? Yes? She's an actor, comedian host of
Scam Goddess podcast and she's been on the show twice
before on our Ten Things I Hate About You episode
and What Women Want. It's Lacy mostly welcome back. I'm

(03:02):
so happy to be back. I love this pod. We
love all your fans. They're so nice. I mean, you're
a fan favorite. So I love Oh God, I love
you guys. I'm happy to be here and for bad Boy.
So we're uh, we were thinking about doing Bad Boys
because the franchise, as Caitlin was alluded to, is being
I don't even is it being rebooted if it's the

(03:24):
same cast. I think it's just I've seen a little
bit of this script. I can't say everything. I actually
turned down audition for this movie. No, not the flags tired,
but I was working on something else, and I got
the audition and it was just a character that just
wasn't me. It was like a badass with tattoos, like

(03:45):
nose weapons. And I went into like I was self
taping shooting in Georgia, and I did the tape like
six times to the point of exhaustion. And then I
asked the guy who was taping. I was like, if
you were me, would you send the statement? And he
was like, no, you right, your honest things right. I
was like, and I won't. Um. But it's so it's

(04:09):
um just like the third installment of this sequel. So
it's not necessarily a reboot, it's just the third. It's
just like they made the third one very very far
away from the second and first the second. I mean,
it's sort of like the Before Sunrise trilogy because they're
almost like they're like eight years because the first one
was eight years after, the second one was eight years
after the first one, and then this one is, however,

(04:31):
like over a decade after that, so they you know,
they're in and out the bad boys. They got a
story to tell every once in a while, and this
is their most recent story. And and I guess that
one of the credited writers on The New Bad Boys
is Sally Field's son, So big win for nepotism. I

(04:53):
always love a good nepotism pick, just like his nepotism
rarely wins. I just I'm like, who nepotism should be
like a category at award shows, like who did men epotism?
That best daughter of an actor in the lead series?
Did you not realize how to recognizable last name? Is it?

(05:14):
Maya ha? I think Maya Hawk is one of the
new nepotisms, the new nepotisms, that's my show. I'm good right, Well,
sometimes it gets switched up because like Judd Apata's daughter
doesn't have the same last name, or does she? I know,
I don't like a sneak attack of nepotism, doesn't have
the same last name. We're not gonna go like sometimes
she does. It's maud at that one's very clear when

(05:39):
the nepotisms sneak in on you, I'm like, how dare
I mean? Jennifer Instant daddy was an actor and that's
not get on us because we really knew that. Well,
then you got like Nick Cage who change who was
Nick Coppola and then changed his name because he's like,
I don't want nepotism. Well he yeah, but it's like,

(05:59):
is a vander else that old money though, there's like
a documentary about him and his fancy, fancy mommy because
his mom's glory of Vanderbilt. It's like the fanciest and
it's You're just like, oh, no, I love it. I
love it if I had that last name, look flaunted.
Don't be out here trying to be like I earned
my stripe, spitch. Please, there's no way in hell even

(06:21):
if you change your name, bitch. You can't change your
area code. You can't change your family connections. You might
as well listen. If I was lazy, winfree, you would
know it everywhere I went. I'm like, don't maybe call
my mama, don't maybe call Oprah? Okay, everywhere I would
character you should do two pumps of vanilla, bitch, don't

(06:42):
you forget it? Did you ever have the opra chie
at Starbucks? I've had over everything. My mom has an
over room her house. Oh my god, I'm not even kidding.
That's wonderful. Yeah. I loved the Overchie so much I
didn't even taste it the same as the regular Chies richer,
but richer. I paid forty cents extra just for that,
just for the name from a woman with large breasts,

(07:05):
and also Kathy, that's what the overt I feel so okay.
So back to Bad Boys, Lacy, what's your history relationship
with this movie? Um, I mean I loved all the
Bad Boys. Um so, you know, I mean, it was
a great time for black people in cinema. It's big
action films, lost the bad He's loved Gabrielle Union in
one of them. I'm into it. I've been into Bad Boys.

(07:29):
So watching it again with this I for feminism. You know,
I was very nervous because I was like, oh, I
can't don't put a bad taste on my Bad Boys.
I was really rooting for it. Oh, I mean there
were moments where I was pleasantly surprised. But time period though,
I feel like it was doing a lot more than

(07:51):
the time period in contact. And this is the last
time I jumped to the defense, I promised. But for
Michael Bay, we've seen my tworst. I've seen much worse
from Michael Bay. But it's also not but that's not
a fair yard stick. It's totally not okay. Jamie, what's
your history. I saw Bad Boys Too at a drive

(08:13):
in movie theater when I was ten. I really liked it.
Didn't go back to get the other VHR. This is
the first time I've seen the first one. I've seen
the second one before. I don't know, Like I all
my cousins really liked Bad Boys and I knew the song,
but it was another one of those things where my
family is kind of like, that's not a movie for girls.
Boys is in the title, So so like, if if

(08:34):
I had, I would have had to really make an
effort to see the first one just because if boys
was in the title, I wasn't going to be able
to see it. Really, But yeah, I had at the
drive in liked it and and for all of this
movie's faults, Caitlyn, you admitted it in the text Threat Too,
It's a fun wrong. It's a fun wrong I had.
I was not bored. I was. I was just saying

(08:56):
a lot because the movie that Michael Bay makes after this,
The Rock a Lot Happy, and I'm so bored. So
this movie is is. The performances are are solid. The chemistry,
I'm telling the chemistry, they're on fire. The whole time,
So yeah, it's good. I had never seen any of
these movies until prepping for the episode. I watched Bad
Boys one twice. I watched the first half hour of

(09:19):
Bad Boys too, didn't finish it in time before we
had to start recording. And uh, yeah, that's my very
short history. But like I said, it's I never thought
I would sort of like a Michael Bay movie, and
yet here I am. I'm like this, it's fun. It's fun.
It's fun. I didn't realize it was a Michael Bay
movie until we were like starting to prep for it.

(09:39):
I wouldn't like, I don't know who is movie I
thought this was. But this is also Michael Bay's first
movie directorial debut for a feature. Yeah, I realized it
from the shots. And it's definitely a movie that you
need to watch in theaters because you need support to
make sense because on your television, boy, oh boy, all
those slow circular camera AND's angle up to the sky.

(10:02):
You know, he goes full corny so many times. I'm
really excited for context corner for this because I have
a bunch of quotes about the production of this movie,
and as with all Michael Bay, p Jecks it's like
you can't imagine, but but yeah, just like how he
like orchestrates somehow the corny ist possible shot every single

(10:22):
time where like suddenly Will Smith is shirtless and why
he was like running and then his chest is just out.
There's a whole story. I'm very excitive. All right, Well
should I do the recap? Yes a time? Okay. Mike
Lowry that's Will Smith and Marcus Burnett that's Martin Lawrence.

(10:43):
They are cops in Miami. It's very yellow at the beginning.
They are Michael Bay. Is that like a Michael Bay thing?
I guess I just think of them is on fire, right.
He does a lot of like post production coloring of
his footage. But they're driving around and then some criminals

(11:04):
try to car jack Mike Lowry's car. Marcus fat shames
one of them. And then but here's the thing. They're
bad boys. So they stopped the criminals or is it okay?
Bad boys? And they say so they okay? Because for
a minute I was like, wait, are they the bad
boys or does the bad boys refer to the bad
guys that the cops are trying to capture? I wasn't

(11:28):
super clear they're the boys. They're the bad boys for life.
You're right, And it took them twenty five years to
a minute, but they're the bad boys for life. So
they stopped the bad guys. Not to be confused with
the bad boys. The bad boys are the good guys, yeah,
but the bad guy yeah. Okay, So then we learned

(11:51):
more about Marcus and Mike. Marcus has a his wife, Teresa,
and boy is she his wife. Here's what we know
about this woman. And she is his wife, wife, and
he wants to have sex with her, but she's me.
She don't want to have sex. Her name is Teresa.

(12:13):
At least we know her name. We know what her
name is. What does she do all day? God only
she simply don't know. And they have three kids together.
But Mike Lowry, on the other hand, he's a bachelor, womanizer,
playboy who has a lot of sex with the ladies.
And that first thing where he goes to Martin Lawrence's

(12:34):
house and then he's like, hey, kids, want to hear
about this lady I fucked last night, And then the
wife is like no, And we're supposed to be like, oh,
she's such a buzz kill. You're like no, don't. They're
like small children. They weren't teenager. We're a little eight
year old. You'll hear about this. Ask I got into
last night, like what it was like, Uncle Mike, did

(12:56):
you go on a date? He's like, oh, I went
on a date. You're like, no, make this stuff right now.
Oh yes, okay. So then we cut to the bad
guys again, not to be confused with the bad boys.
The bad guys are breaking into somewhere and stealing something,
and now things are very blue. Then Marcus and Mike, okay,

(13:17):
the bad boys they had to work at the precinct.
And it turns out that the robbery that we just
saw was heroin being stolen out of their evidence locker.
At least it's not DVDs. I was like, I thought
it might be something really silly, like the First Fast
and The Furious where they're like DVDs were stolen, but
it's like many millions of dollars worth of heroin and

(13:40):
it was from Mike and Marcus is like biggest drug bust.
Joey Pantaliano is their police captain. And then this other captain,
a woman, watch out, Alison Sinclair, another captain. I loved
all forty five seconds of that. She is like breathing

(14:02):
down Joey Pants's neck and she's like, this might be
an inside job. Figure it out before the press gets involved.
So then the bad boys start trying to figure out
who stole the drugs, and they go to this boxing
gym where a woman named Max, she like Mike Lowry
is like, hey, Max, let me know if you hear
anything on the streets. And she has a crush on him,

(14:25):
so she's like okay, and then she's like and let
me know if and he's like, yeah, we'll see. Anyways,
she dies, Um. Yeah. Then they go to this rich
guy's house and he I think was the one who
installed the ventilation system that the bad guys snuck through

(14:48):
to steal the heroine. When they get inside the house,
he's dead. So Mike and Marcus, who reminder our cops,
they just start rifling through the crime scene, getting her
fingerprints everywhere before any sort of like crime scene photos
are taken, you know, just spoiling the whole thing. Also
lots of banter about the dead guys. Know, they keep

(15:11):
it funny when there's a body in the room. Think
let's keep it like yeah, Like Martin Lawrence is like, oh,
it's stinky. I don't like it. He like almost pukes
as this way every time we run a dead body,
you know, every day? Why what? Why? And then they
just have a banter and I'm like, he was dead here? Okay, yeah, okay.

(15:32):
So then Max, who we find out is a sex worker,
and her best friend Julie that's Talione, go to a
guy's house because Max thinks that he might be in
on this like drug heist thing. Uh. And then he
brings out a package of the heroine on a platter
and we're like, oh, yes, he is in on it.

(15:53):
But then suddenly a bunch of bad guys show up
and they shoot and kill Max after a long monologue
and and lots of like making them dance around. It
was like, I don't kill everybody in here. Why you
gotta talk so much beforehand? They go dad like, and
before you let me tell you this, kill him and

(16:14):
go right. But then okay, So Julie, who had gone
to the bathroom and missed out on the killing spree,
witnesses all of this and manages to escape escape on
her own. I was like, okay, Michael Bay movie, we
got to do things. Yeah, as surprising, so's jump in
a pool. Right, So now the bad boys have to

(16:37):
figure out who this witnesses and they have to find her,
but she calls them first. But and she wants to
talk to Mike Lowry because her friend Max had talked
him up so much, but he's not at his desk
and she's like, well, I only want to talk to
Mike Lowry. So then Marcus pretends to be Mike over
the phone. The weirder plot points in the movie because

(16:59):
they could have bailed on this lie pretty early on
and probably like with no consequence. I think it seems right.
They really like keep doubling down on this. But it's yeah,
because you got a trick a woman. It's the nineties,
every movie the nineties checking a woman. Yes, they're just

(17:21):
doing it to do it. After a while, yeah, it
becomes it's weird, like Shakespearean comedy of errors thing, and
we're like, okay, fine, it's weird. It's weird, but it's
a Michael Bay movie anyway, right, So then Marcus goes
over to her apartment, still pretending to be Mike Lowry

(17:42):
and the bad guys show up. He helps her escape
this time. Then Marcus, still pretending to be Mike take right,
takes Julie to Mike's apartment and leaves her there because
she refuses to go anywhere for protective custody except for
Mike Lowry's condo, So it's hard to trace the logic there.

(18:05):
I think maybe because her best friend trusted him. Also,
the guy who got murdered in the heroine thing, who
was also a criminal, was a cop, so she was like, oh,
the cops are Dirney. I can't go there. They're gonna
give me yet, So let's go to your house. Mike Lowry. Okay,
that helps. That's how all black people say Michael Lowry.

(18:30):
And so now they've got to do this whole switcheru
where Mike has to pretend to be Marcus and stay
with Marcus is his wife, and they don't, but they
do for some right. And then Marcus stays at Mike's
place pretending to be Mike and he's protecting Julie the witness.

(18:51):
Then he starts showing Julie mug shots to see if
any of the people are someone that she recognizes as
one of Max's ers. And there's this one guy that
she does recognize Noah. So then Mike and Marcus go
to a nightclub called Club Hell. You know it's lit.

(19:14):
That was that was a big one for me. I
loved it. And then and it follows through on the
name that club I can't scary. Yeah, I mean there's
like brown piss in the urinalis, like who goes here?
They're like bodies hanging from the ceiling that are wrapped
in aluminum foils. You want something bad to happen to you,

(19:36):
that's when you go. You have a death wish. Halloway
tonight we're going to clap Hill. There's also like this
giant fish tank that serves as a window into the
men's restroom. But to be fair, if there's not a
fish tank at the club at the movie, are you

(19:56):
eving at a club at the ready? And then also
what are they going to smash in to? It's not you.
That's the route. That's the rule of movie fish. That's
a new rule rule of fish. So they're at Club
Hell to look for Noah the bad guy, and Julie
decides that she's going to go to and she brings
a gun that she gets I guess out of Mike's

(20:18):
apartment and the bad Guys and the bad Boys they
all spot each other. There's there's this big fight that
breaks out. Then there's a car chase. The bad boys
and Julie getaway once again, but they still don't have
any real leads. Then there's this whole thing where like
Julie pretends to be horny for Marcus and then she's
like wow, wow, will Smith, it's so hot. And then

(20:42):
it leads to this misunderstanding where Marcus thinks that Mike
is having sex with his Wife's also unnecessary, and then
in a kiddie pool, right, because the thing about Mike
Marcus is that they're bad boys for life, but they
also fight so much testoster. My favorite part of that

(21:03):
is when they finished the fight, the gun slides out
of the kiddie pool. So they've been fighting like armed,
they could have killed each other, thought they were just
wrestling with gun. Yeah, so masculine, I won't date a
man who has wrestled once with a five firearm. Okay,
So then it's ridiculous. So they're still trying to figure

(21:27):
out who was behind stealing the heroine and like what
they planned to do with it. Then Marcus's wife his
wife shows up and she's mad at Marcus for lying
to her about going to Cleveland, but it's still framed like, oh,
she's such an obstacle. Exactly why is she so mad?
Believe the lies I told you, Theresa? Why? God? But

(21:51):
then this also means that the jig is up and
Julie now knows that Marcus was lying about being Mike Lowry.
Just then the bad guys show up again. Another gunfight ensues,
and the we got a damsel, this, we got a damsel.
They kidnapped her and they get away with her because

(22:11):
she's emotional and that's why she decided to become a damsel.
She was so smart the rest of this time, and
now she's like, I'm just gonna want the streets by
myself because I'm mad at you. Cops right by her
snatched her. Excuses like well, if Marcus's wife can find us,
then the bad guys can find us too, and it's

(22:32):
like that doesn't track. I think like Marcus's wife would
know where Mike Glowry lives anyway. So they've kidnapped her
and they're getting away. So now Mike and Marcus only
have a couple of hours before the big deal goes down,
and suddenly there's another important female character, Francine. She is

(22:55):
I think, like a secretary. But the precinct, I thought
they were maybe a little mean to They were a
little hard on Francy because Francine, the bad guys go
to get information from her and they're like, we'll kill
your son if you don't give us the information. So
obviously she gives it to them, and then she reports
this to Mike and Mike's like okay, Like he's like,

(23:16):
I was like, what what choice did she have? Will Smith? Yeah,
she's being blackmailed, I think with like photographs the nude. Yeah,
they took nudes of her and then they were threatening
to post them at her son's school, so they weren't
even thrown. I don't even think they were threatening together.
It was like a horny blackmail. And also they're most
steaks blackmail in the nineties because like how far could

(23:36):
you get with some nudes online? You know, It's not
like now we could put them on Twitter. Back then's
like old timing, Like what do you have to scan
them into the composer? You're gonna scan to my son?
And this polaroid Selnese. Yeah, they should have tried to
kill this son. That makes more sense. Oh maybe I

(23:57):
was just you were trying to sit with that is
trying to say, Okay, it's like they said they was
gonna upload my fugie nudes, my grainy f Yeah that's Francine.
She but like, yeah, she's been blackmailed. So she was

(24:18):
like giving the bad guys some information. But then she
helps out Mike and Marcus and then they know where
to go now, so they go to this airplane hangar
because that's where like the big the drug deal is
going to go down. Then there's another big fight and
I honestly stopped writing the recap here, so I don't
totally remember what happens. I feel like they just they win,
and then they rescue Julie and everything. They rescue her,

(24:42):
they're finally then Will Smith is able to say I
love you to Martin Lawrence, which is his I kind
of actually really liked that little arc anyway, over a
dead guy's body, also over and like really not concerned
about it. That's when their moments happen. Over a dead
guy's body. Will Smith is like I love you, my friend,
and he's like Wow. And then Tayley and he's like,

(25:03):
am I cool? And they're like yes, And there's a
dead man there though. Cool. And then Martin Lawrence handcuffs
Will Smith to tay and then he's like, I gotta
go see my wife. And now it last, I'm going
to fund my wife, who, as far as we know,
it's still mad at him. Right. So and that's the

(25:23):
end of the movie. Alright, cool, bad boys, bad boys.
What you're gonna do, what you're gonna do when it
comes for you. Let's take a quick break. Yeah, let's
do it. And we're back. We're back and we're bad.
We're back and we're bad boys back. We're back, We're bad,

(25:45):
We're boys. Uh. Can I do a little bit of
contact learner? Okay? Okay. So this is Michael Bay's directorial debut.
He has directed some music videos at this point. He's
famously directed Meat Loaf music video and so he's coming
in and but even though it's his first movie, he's

(26:07):
very confident about his ability to direct this movie. So
there is this great I think we talked about it
in the Rock and Trent. This is the third Michael
Bay movie, Recovering, and that's maybe something that we should
keep in mind about our dignity. That's true. But so
we've used this article a bunch. But it is an

(26:27):
oral history published in g Q inn called an oral
history of Michael Bay the most explosive director of all time. Sure,
so I pulled some quotes about Bad Boys. Um So,
One of the producers of the movie, Jennifer Klein said, quote,
there was no script when they started filming Bad Boys.

(26:48):
Um So, that's something. Uh No, Martin Laurence does a
lot of improv It did seem like, hey, we need
to fill up two minutes before we get to the
plat points. So Martin, you just you just let it rip, Okay,
we'll figure it out in the edit room. And it's
just like say thing. There was like a moment where
Martin Lawrence should have told Mike Lowry that he had

(27:09):
the woman in his apartment, But instead of saying that,
he's like, why do you wait? Why do you come
home last night? More planning? Where was you that for
like a three minutes? And I was like, why won't
you just tell him there's a woman in his house?
It was like yeah, And another thing, my ass is
hurting today because and I'm like, are you going to
get to the woman in the house that was Michael
Bay like being like, no, we need more screen time more.

(27:31):
I was like, we just gotta fill the time, and
we're I mean, there's like that all like weirdly half
improvised scenes in Michael bay movies are weird or offensive,
but like and this one there was like weird like
conversation they had about like who are they were they
too other detectives who are like Lucille Ball is stupid?
And then they said something like racist about Desi Arnez

(27:54):
and then and then and then the scene starts and
it has there's always some black and Latino conflict because
it's in Miami. So they're like, we've got to keep
it true to Miami, the blacks and Latinos. Scott to
argue with, and we are going to hire three white
male writers, but let's make it authentic. You're like, yikes.
So the most interesting part of the oral history for

(28:17):
this movie is uh that surprise, surprise. Martin Lawrence is
not a big fan of Michael Bays when this movie
was being made, but I guess later he was like,
I guess I don't care. Hardy this is maybe you know,
he has since made a hard turn on Michael Bay.
So I'll just read this exchange. So Michael Bay says, quote,

(28:38):
by week two, Martin was being a dick to me,
and I was like, what is this attitude? He didn't
trust the white man? That was the deal? Unquote Martin.
Martin Lawrence says, quote, That's exactly what it was. You know, Michael,
he has a certain bravado. One time he said to me,
I need your notes on the script, and I looked
at him. I said, Michael, yeah, I'll you the notes

(29:00):
when I get to it, and he looked at me
with this blank stare, like, oh he did not. So
they're just like okay. Uh. Michael Bays says quote, Eventually
I took Martin aside and said, dude, what's your deal.
I'm busting my ask to make you look good, make
you look funny, and you just keep belittling me. Hey,
then you look funny, Martin Lawrence, he does not need

(29:22):
music video direct Uh. And then here's the speech, almost
like it was ready to come out. Martin says, I'm
a black man that made it from nothing, and this
is okay, this is the wild okay, and I said,
Michael Bays said, you know what, I'm a white guy
who made it from nothing too. I grew up in
the fucking valley, slavery in the fucking valley. And then

(29:49):
the quote ends instant respect unquote, and then Martin Lawrence's quote,
I had to get to know him. We grew to
be the coolest this I uh we we don't know
it was. I grew up in the fucking valley. It's
just like being a black man in America. Let me

(30:09):
the fun. This fucking man, he's reb um. So, so
that's some background where where everyone's coming from. But the
I mean the valley, so he's really experienced a lot
of hardship coming from Pasadena. Um anyways, um, And then

(30:30):
there's like some other stuff just about how like this
is Michael bays movie where he basically establishes his corny,
over the top style and Will Smith didn't okay, So
Will Smith says, quote Michael Bay was like, oh, take
your shirt off and run with the gun. And I
was like, come on, man, that's that's just on the
edge of corny. But Michael can take things you'd think
of as corny and make it super galactic iconic. Unfortunately,

(30:53):
I would contest this. I mean, let's not forget that
Will Smith is a Libra, so you know, he's honestly
just trying to keep the scales mounse. He knows Martin's
over here, like I'm a black man. Who was this
music devideo director. He's like, all right, Michael, geez, if
it's gonna keep everybody onset happy, I'll pull out these
six abs. Come on, now, I'm not mad at it,

(31:19):
there's no I mean, I'm glad this shot was there.
I mean, I wasn't unhappy with it, but I will
see Wilson miss abbs any one time. You want to
give them to me. It's formative. So uh so. So
that's the production background. And this movie did incredibly well.
Um it had what had a nineteen million dollar budget,

(31:39):
which I guess Michael Bay ended up sinking a bunch
of his own money in it to make the explosions bigger,
of course, but it made almost a hundred million dollars
at the box office. Did really well. Meant that he
could make the rock and basically this is the reason
that we're stuck with him. Another thing I thought was
interesting about the background of this movie is that originally

(31:59):
the p Ball that we're going to be cast, but
scheduling thing was John Lovett and Dana Carvey. That movie
would have suck. Would have seen that? And what that
would that? What Dana Carvey as what? Oh? Wait? Them
as the bad Ball? No? Instead of Will Smith and

(32:20):
Martin Lawrence. What isn't that? That's like, um, you know,
everything ended up Wayne's everything. And then Will Smith was
also not supposed to be in it. They wanted Arsenio Halls.
I read that and he said no. And then they're like,
all right, Will Smith because this was like Will Smith's

(32:40):
movie where they're like, oh, he's like yeah, Like he's
not just like a TV boy, so this is like
a big for him. They got very lucky that that
casting fell through, because Jesus did they have it wrong?
This supposed to be a sexy Miami movie. You're gonna
have these datl actors. This movie would have been horrible.
I mean, the combo of Michael Bay's corny as shots

(33:03):
and then these corny as mints, Oh my god, it
would have been really bad. Yeah. Um, so so that's
that's a little bit of the context for you. Thank
you Jamie. Welcome. So let's talk about the ladies, shall we. Yeah, well,

(33:23):
this is a movie that has boys in the title,
boys in the title, so it is not too concerned
with women. Unfortunately, women are generally framed as either being nagging,
frigid shrews or just meddlesome police captains or if we're
talking about Teleoni, the main female character of the movie,

(33:46):
is constantly damseled harassed. Anytime women shows emotions, there's like
a disproportionate consequence, like like I say, was saying, like
shows emotion like really one time when she storms out
and then she's immediately like abducted. Yeah. Ta. Leoni also

(34:07):
seems to be putting moisturize around her legs a lot
of this movie. Her legs were very dry, the most
arid legs of a movie. So this is nothing new
for Michael Bay, but he loves to objectify and overly
sexualize women's bodies in his movie. Something that stood out
to me was Teleoni seemed to have a bunch of

(34:30):
sexy changes of clothes at a place she did not
live right, and she did not pack at the other place.
They were shot out of there by gunfire, so the
assumption is that Mike Glay just has sexy women clothes
and which actually could track. He's like, my bearis size four,
Like she's wearing a leather dress when she needs him,
and like where did this come from? Well, there's that

(34:52):
scene where like a masseuse shows up at his apartment
ready to like give Will Smith a massage JJ, and
then Martin Laures has to be like, go away. Honestly,
my dream wrong. But so I think we're meant to believe.
I think we're meant to believe that women are just
showing up at Mike Lowry's apartment all the time and

(35:13):
presumably leaving items of clothing behind. I'll wear these things,
and every time, you know, Martin comes back to the apartment,
he was like, oh, I was just lotion him a pussy.
What's up slooping myself up in case something. I have
a quick list though, of all the of the main
moments in which women's bodies are overly sexualized. We've got

(35:36):
the opening shot where a scantily clad woman gets out
of the car with the other criminals, the bad guys.
She just like walks past the bad boys to distract
them so that the criminals can carjack them, so it's
just like a woman there as a prop basically to
distract the bad boys. Then there's the scene where that

(35:58):
you talked about Lacey, where she's just like putting lotion
on in this very sexy way even though she's alone
in a stranger's Yeah, I do it every day it was.
There was another one where like, I guess they're about
to go to bed and my Martin Lawrence is pretending
to be my glory, so he's like, she's like, come
to bed, and then she's got her feet up and

(36:19):
she's got a belt around her feet or something, and
she's just like playing with her legs. And that's weird
to because it's like, we haven't really been given any
indication that she's like into him. She seems very mistrustful
of him and right, so I think what's happening here
is that she's starting to catch on to the fact.
She's like yeah, but it's not totally clear because the

(36:43):
first time I watched it, I was like, Oh, she's
just really horny for him all of a sudden, and
then the second time I was like, oh, wait, no,
I think she's actually trying to like call his bluff,
but she's not clear one way or the other, so
they're still making her stupid because the second that she
sees Will Smith, she should be like, oh, I went
to a house where all of your photos were there,
that's your doo and too real quick, but like no,

(37:05):
she's a stupid lady with boobs, so she'll believe this man.
And then there's like that in that same scene, there's like,
I mean, there's there's a bunch of like no homo
moments in this movie that do not age well and
weren't good then, but like, I feel like that's another
way she sort of tries to call his bluff and

(37:26):
then it's like he you know, they immediately go full
no homo And then you're just like right, because she
sees all these photos of Will Smith in the apartment
and she's like, oh, who's that. I thought he might
be your lover, and Martin Lawrence is like, um no,
he's not my lover. I'm not gay. He's my police partner. Yeah,

(37:47):
it's just like totally no homo moment. Martin Lawrence is
horrified by the idea that someone might think he's gay. Yeah,
well that's one horrible way to approach this. Yeah. Yeah,
so I know that using Michael Bay as a yardstick
is unwise and we can't, but but I I mean

(38:08):
it is interesting, just like because we've seen so much
of his filmography now for some reason, to see someone's
attitude towards women get worse over time, like expert, Like,
there there's a lot, I mean, there's a lot of
hallmarks of like how badly Michael Bay treats his female
characters in this movie, but like she's being treated like

(38:32):
a queen compared to how like Megan Foxes treet Like
it's it's a power dynamic. As soon as Michael Bay
had the power than it was like Okay, come here,
you skank bitch, I'm gonna make you a star. You
better say thank you and maybe give me some six.
And he's like also just one of those guys you know,
like before he had things in the Valley. I'm sure
in his life when he was a black man in

(38:53):
the Valley, a big struggle for him was he couldn't
get bitches. He's not like a good looking guy my pitches.
I mean, that's what Michael Bay calls women. And and
I mean I've seen him at restaurants and ship and
he's always at the youngest girls, like the youngest little
like twenty sings even you know, nineties and twenties and stuff.
So I think it's a thing of like as soon

(39:14):
as he started getting more power, it's like, Okay, now
I'm gonna teach you a lesson. God does not surprise
me at all. Um. Yeah, I mean the way even
in this movie where he probably because this is his
first feature, like he's probably not given a whole enormous
ton of creative freedom at least in terms of like

(39:36):
how he treats the female characters. But even in this movie,
there's still so much like objectification and mistreatment of women.
But I think that's just like the action franchise. It's
like we're gonna have cars, you're gonna have explosions, and
you're going to have legs and acid titty. There's a
scene where like they're running there there's like a chase,
one of many chase scenes, but one of them they

(39:57):
run through like a photography shoot where women 're just
like in bikinis and they just like interrupt this shoot
that just didn't have to be in the movie at all.
There's one there's that scene where they run outside and
there's um a bunch of people in wheel wheelchairs and
they just knock someone. It's like, why do that? What

(40:18):
are you doing? People with disabilities are treated as an
obstacle in this movie, and that's well, and that's like
Michael Bay Bread and Butter Ship too. It sucks because
it's like I didn't dislike Julie's character at least in
the abstract. I feel like she And it sucks because
I'm just comparing it to other action movies and Michael

(40:41):
Bay movies, so we're not operating in you know, like
women in action franchises. Still, there's really not that much
and if there are, it's just a reboot of an
all male franchise and then everyone gets upset. But I
did think that Julie participated more than your average action sideline.

(41:01):
I mean, she's still largely sidelined, but at least she
contributes in some moments, and like there was like there's
that scene towards the end where she like insists on
being allowed to be there and be involved, and I
mean she's basically wrong because she doesn't have a weapon
or any way to defend herself about or ability, right,
But I was just like, I guess that that, Huh,

(41:23):
I don't. I mean, I feel like she does more
than your average like woman in a nineties era action
he is allowed to do. But that's not saying that's
not there. Yeah. She also she like finds because they
the bad boys a k a. The good guys, are
constantly handcuffing her to a vehicle. Um, So at one

(41:46):
point she finds the handcuff keys and like steals it
and hides it so that the next time they do that,
she's like, no, I'm not going to let them handcuffed
me to the steering wheel, which pays off. Like, after
she gets kidnap apped, she's put in handcuffs and then
she's able to use those keys to free herself. And
then she does something and I don't totally remember. I

(42:07):
think she drives the truck into some of the barrels
of ether or the thing. I loved the barrels of Ether,
especially because there was a conversation between like the I
love the evil guy just for purely being evil and
really not being that smart. He goes down to the
chemists lab where they're cooking up the drugs and he's like,

(42:27):
why are my drugs taking so long? And they're like,
it's very humid in here, so it's hard to cook
the drugs. I don't care. I'll kill you both. And
he's like, well then you won't get the drugs. I
don't care, I'll kill you. It's like this, this is
not a protective conversation, sir. Like, I just love how
brazenly evil he is. I enjoyed it through. And so
he talks to the guy at the ether truck and

(42:47):
he said, hey, man, watch the truck and be careful,
and then he's gonna walk away, and then the guy's
lighting a cigarette. He comes back and slaps and he's like,
just eat that back there, and it's like, well, you
didn't tell the guy who was running the truck that
he had explosives, Like what do you expect? I loved him.
He was just so like one note villain I did. Like,
I mean, it is like in an action movie like this,

(43:07):
it is fun when the only smart people are the
heroes and everyone else is aggressively dumb. As rocks like
Martin Lawrence and Will Smith are smart and everyone else
is dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb and in the way, yeah,
that including several of the female characters who get not
that much screen time. But like his wife is treated

(43:28):
as usually just an obstacle true withholding. Uh, I think
that the withholding of sex is like more hit on
than usually. This becomes like a running joke because the
first exchange of dialogue in the entire movie is Martin
Lawrence basically saying, like, my wife is a true who
will not suck me, so I have to eat this

(43:49):
big mac in your Porsche instead. And then Will Smith's like, well,
she's hot, right, And then it's like Martin Lawrence is
regarded as a good man because he doesn't try to
fund anybody else even though his wife is withhold sex. Right.
And then a few minutes after that, we see him
try to have sex with his wife and she's like, no,
you didn't come home early enough last night. It's also

(44:11):
like seven am and their kids have to get to school.
But yeah, she's such a bit like and then like
Mike keeps teasing Marcus about like not getting any from
his wife, he keeps teasing himself about it, like it's
just like a running gag. There's a phone caller to
with her where he'll like It seems like there's at
least one example of Martin Lawrence calling his wife and

(44:34):
being like, hey, can I come home and you will
fuck me? And like like this is a call that
happens between spouses and she's like no, and he's like, ah,
why not? And then and then like his like boss
will be like, hey, stop asking your wife to fuck you.
We've got police work to do. You're just like what
is this? Also like what a like manual for like

(44:55):
if he wanted to cheat, he should have been able
to because she would never look he I had seven
times to get some couchie during the movie, and but
then she shows up all mad when she's not sleeping
with him, like what are you trying? What is this narrative?
She's raising his three children, she's busy. There's also that
scene where, um, I think it's after Will Smith got

(45:18):
like thrown out of a window and got concussed, and
it's when Martin Lawrence is supposed to be telling him
about the woman that's in his apartment, but instead he's
like he's just yelling at him and being like where
where are you? And then Will Smith is like, oh,
listen to you yelling you're like a nagging wife, and
it's like, oh, this movie hates doesn't think of women. Um,

(45:43):
we've got to take another quick break. But let's come
back soon and talk more. Okay, Caitlin, don't make it weird,
and we're back. I want to one more thing about
Julie while we're still talking about her. Things that I

(46:04):
liked that she did was rescued herself at the beginning
when her friend was killed. She doesn't need to be
rescued by some nameless male character. I like that she
calls the cops and is like, Hey, this is what
I need, blah blah blah, and um, maybe that's it. Oh,

(46:24):
and I like that it seems like again it's like
I think you're totally spot on with like just Michael
Bay doesn't have enough power yet to make the movie
as sexist as he would want to. But even though
it's like there, well, they do chain Taileone and will
Smith together at the end, they handcuffed them together, but

(46:44):
they don't kiss. And I thought that that was a
lot of restraint for Michael Bay, was that there was
a woman in the movie the whole time, and she
didn't even kiss anyone. True, That's that's some Bay restraint.
Also fascinating that so Mike Lowry, Mike Larry, I knew

(47:05):
that the boxing girl in the gym was a call girl. Yes,
So when he finds out that she dies and like
pulls up the sheet and he's like all hurt and
ship cut to Martin Lawrence being like, hey, I got
the other girl's friend in your apartment. He's like, you
have a hooker in my house? You have in my house,
And it was like the other girl was technically he

(47:27):
would be very nice to her, Like, what's what one
sex worker worse than the other? Like, so this movie
has a strong contempt for sex workers and sex work, yes,
and and I so on the Wikipedia for this movie
scholar coming at this from a scholar perspect of course,
Max is described as both a sex worker and his

(47:49):
ex girlfriend, which I don't know if maybe it was
like a line of dialogue we missed or this could
be inaccurate, But that was how I was trying to
contextualize that relationship, is that they knew each other, possibly
through sex work, but also they'd had some sort of relationship.
And then I think that this movie, like it's very
non specific sex work there, like it seems like es Corty.

(48:13):
It's not very specific about what it is, but it
was like pretty agreedious that there's two black women with
significant roles or I mean significant being a stretch. But
there's Martin, Lawrence's wife, and then there's Max who's killed off.
One good spin in Honey was trying to figure out

(48:35):
who the actor who played her was, and it was
Karen Alexander, who was like, she has like a pretty
cool story. She has like a she has a model
turned actor, Yeah, which I mean I think you can
always tell whenever when it's a model turned actor. But
she's a model turned actor. She like, uh, did a
lot of like cool activism work to get black models

(48:57):
more accepted in an American mainstream culture the eighties, acted
for a little while, and now she's represented by Trump
Model Management. So you know, life is crazy. Life comes
at you fast, very fast. But yeah, that was so
like And then also the like madame who she has
a conversation, Yeah they are. They are both murdered. So

(49:21):
all the sex workers we see on screen in this
movie are punished by being murdered for being sex workers.
And they make it and they go out of their way,
even though it is not plot relevant to not make
Taylani a sex worker as well, they go out of
their way to make it clear. She's like, well, I'm
not a sex worker, but i'll be an escort for
tonight because you're my best friend. I'm a photographer and

(49:43):
I'm struggling. The scene that passes the Bechtel test spoiler
alert in this movie is so horribly written. It is
like it passes the Bechtel test because it's Julie and
Max talking to each other about general stuff. They're just
screaming exposition, but like they're not even looking at each other,
like like, how do you know they're acting? Like when

(50:04):
are you making full eye contact with someone in a scene?
You're explaining your job and like, look, I'm not a
sex worker. I don't condone sex work. However, I am
a beautiful white woman who does photography and art and
is worthy of life. So I will go with you
to this event, but know that I'm an unwilling participant.
And then Max is like, okay, I still have feelings

(50:25):
for will Smith and Taylor, and he's like okay, and
then they walk in and you're just like like Taylor.
Taylor Leans basically screaming like, yeah, I am a white
woman who is not a sex worker, Like she's screaming
to the audience, I'm going to live, like it's just
it's so much. I forgot that we learned that she's

(50:45):
a photographer, so at least we know what she does.
Photographer is also just like this, it's still like the
stock photo of like film jobs for waify women. Are
you just a beautiful woman is skating her way through
life photography? Give her a polar on. She's got this somehow,
this is a job, Like, well, do you think she

(51:09):
took the photos of Francine? That's why she would use
her skills? That would be really funny though she was
where she was, Um, but yeah, I guess. I mean,
we learn again not to give this movie any credit whatsoever.
But I was surprised that we learn a little bit
about Julie in that we get a sense of some

(51:31):
of her sort of like code of ethics and that
she does not eat meat, she's a vegetarian. I liked that.
I thought that that was like fun and also it's
like cute because you're like, oh, the boy riders are
like what should we say about her, I don't eat flesh.
She goes in this rant about bologney. You're just like, Okay, sure,

(51:54):
I guess I don't know. No blogny Tleani baby, I
love it. Sorry about that. So yeah, we get two
facts about her. But yeah, they did Max's character so
dirty it sucked, like and and just on top of that,
where they it's just like that thing where a writer

(52:15):
knows that this character is gonna die obviously, so they
don't even bother to characterize her. They're like, okay, well, uh,
we don't need to say anything. We don't even need
to say if she has an interest in anything except
Will Smith, because we need her death to move forward
the narrative of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence, like the
narrative just like sacrifices her so that the movie can happen.

(52:36):
And it's also the scene where she gets shot Michael
Bay the corniness jumped out like truly, It's like she
spins in a circle. He grabs a pillow and it's
behind his back, and then the evil guy shoots her
through the pillow and then the music like and then
he ensumes in on an eye ball, which is like

(52:58):
the expression of any ball that's just been shut. And
then it wasn't enough that she's like falling in SloMo.
Of course there's a glass table behind her, because why not?
Why not? And then that scene she also never comes
up again really after, like you get that shot of
like Martin Larcy' is like, oh no, it's Will Smith's

(53:20):
ex and then he's like and then Will Smith goes yeah.
But then but then they sort of stopped talking about it,
like it becomes about the crime and the bad guys,
but it sort of stops being about her. There's one
moment when they're like, it's like after a chase scene
where they the bad guys get away and they're like,
darn it, we still don't know when the big drug
bust is happening. Uh, And then Julie's like, who cares

(53:44):
about that? What about us? Letting the killers of Max
get away? Like that should be our motivation and they're
just like, oh right, Max, Yes, I remember her. It's
coming back to me. Also, I was the only dead
body that they were somber around. Every other dead body
was like a comedy jam Martin Lawrence being like and

(54:09):
we'll be like, come on, man by look play with
his mouth just really and they kill her like she's
like laid out, shot to death in the most model
like she looks like a angel. There's like the smallest
bit of blood on the side of her face, and
was like, oh my girlfriend, Oh my god, and then
forgets about her two seconds later. I'm glad that at

(54:32):
least hale One is like, hey, that's my friend. I'm
not here for no reason. She at least sticks up
for her. Although I thought the bad guy's plot was
a little stupid, it just seems like you guys got
the heroine. The girls already with the cops, so she's talked,
she's already talked. Why are you also focused on killing her? Like,
go do the drug deal? What? What? What? She know?

(54:54):
Literally she's already with the cops. Like it just seems
like we should just do our thing, our drug thing,
and stead of showing up everywhere that she could potentially
get caught to try to kill it. There's not a
lot of logic. Perhaps overall, don't talk about Allison Sinclair
for a seco. What the folk is that there? I liked?
I mean again, it's just like another kind of empty

(55:15):
gesture or like they accidentally wrote it in a female
character or something where she's like another like she's a
little bit above them, right, or is shed of like
captain uh and she she right? She she comes from
like internal affairs or something like that. So she's presented
as an obstacle, as many of the other female characters

(55:36):
in this movie are. But she's like breathing down Joey
Pantaliano's neck about like to solve this case or else
the press is going to have a field day, right,
I mean, I she's definitely written to be a bitchy
like a ball buster. I want to make a sure
this bitchy obstacle new merchant um. But then she's just right.

(56:02):
She shows up every once in a while and then
it's like it's like you just Elba comes up to
her and cats and cause and then she just disappears
from this theme. Yeah, and then she disappears. So she's
there and you're just like okay. Also, also like they
I feel like I don't know if this was just

(56:23):
the nineties, but both the women who work for the
police department have the same severe blonde haircut. Like it
was I kept confusing Allison and Francine because they had
the same haircut. Um, it was like bleached bleech blonde
and some kind of girling. How do you describe that haircut?
And like sure hair doesn't fall that way anymore. I

(56:45):
don't know what a different times different, the gravitational pull
of the earth. It's different, doesn't It must have been
maybe with Cindy Laper popular then that was eighties. I
don't remember. It was Madonna. It was Madonna blonde, weird

(57:07):
hair that she was doing, like, um, express yourself. Yeah, Si,
that song was like express yourself, express yourself, don't repress
your It was that hair. It was that haircut. Yeah, okay,
so it was the human nature haircut there was. Yes,
So they're so they're just like trying to be Madonna,
but it's confused. They were like, give me two Madonna's

(57:29):
who work in the precinct. One of them gets a
few lines, the other ones a trader Benedict's frenzy. That's it.
And they were also wearing nineties type clothes like which
actually isn't weird to have in a Miami p D.
Like women dressed not like police officers per se, because
that's like a thing in Miami is like the suit

(57:50):
leggings is what we call them. Like everyone dresses like
a little more hyper sexualized at the workplace, so it's
actually not a weird thing for the movie. Okay, interesting,
you're like really like I lived, It's just you know,
you get a highlighter pallette wardrobe and everything's tied. I've
never been I've never been to ms. Why the drugs

(58:13):
won't cook? The humidity this Okay, I just wanted to
talk about cop movies just for a moment, because this
is one of many, many, many that it's it's for
the boys. The target audience is men. The characters are
mostly men. These movies can't envision a world where women

(58:37):
would be participants in the story in the context of
anything besides them being like the damsels who get dragged along.
In terms of cop movies that prominently feature a woman
as an officer, I can think of Silence of the Lambs.
I can think of Zootopia, I can think of the

(59:00):
heat and kind of the list kind of stops there
for at least off the top of my head, and
any and if you're a listener, that's like I need
to tweet another movie. That's not the point that there's
not a lot, don't add us. Uh. And on the
other hand, there are dozens and dozens and dozens of

(59:21):
movies about boys. Yes, Um, but the fact that this
is a big budget movie with two black leads is great. Yeah. Also,
I don't think that people look at Bad Boys as
a police movie. Um, they don't really act like police.
They don't ever drive a police car. There, perhaps not
very good at being police. Yeah, this is like just

(59:41):
two homeboys who I guess work in the police department,
you know, just kicking it, having a good time, maybe
be a sexy, maybe stopping a crime. Like I've never
looked at Bad Boys movies and been like, oh, the
cops look so cool. However, I notice how they're looked
at by people who are in law enforcement and by
men sometimes because like there was recently, like maybe a
month and a half ago, there was a shootout in

(01:00:03):
Miami when they were trying to act like fake as
bad boys and everybody's about to go down for this ship.
I'll put the specific incident, but it was with a
UPS truck. They stole a UPS truck, these criminals, and
they also kidnapped the guy who was driving the UPS truck.
So then Miami p D thought this was a Bad
Boys moment, so they out on the motherfucker highway shooting

(01:00:24):
at the UPS truck, the UPS truck shooting back. They
are hide they are shielding themselves. I wish this was
a lot shooting themselves with real civilians who are in cars.
They're like hiding behind the cars and shooting. I'm like,
I'm about to be a ship the fun like they
thought they were in Bad Boys. So unfortunately, this does

(01:00:44):
really influence a lot of dumbass police who want to
get their kicks on. But I've never regarded Bad Boys
movies as like, oh cops, Like I don't that my
cop movie. I actually forgot that this was a cop
movie before I started, Like they us have goods. They
really could be rogue vigilantes and the movie and the
movie also has the character specifically remind you that their

(01:01:07):
cops several times. And I don't think that that's a
mistake because yeah, they don't. They don't dress like cops,
they don't travel, and I mean there's a scene and
I think that the movie is more like fun that way,
like no one wants to cop. They also kill a
lot of bas so many people a lot of people,
and Martin Lawrence at one point is like to Julie,
he's like, you know, the bad guys probably already know

(01:01:29):
where you live, so I'll just leave now and let
them come find you and kill you and good luck
with that. And then she's like, no, wait, please protect
me and he's like, okay, fine, but like, yeah, it's
like that stuff. They're like rifling through all the crime scenes,
like messing up crime scenes, like they're not good cops.
It's wild. I love and I love the troup of

(01:01:50):
their boss just yelling at them like every day is
their last day, you know, but it never is. This
is the last time, You're like, no, not um. One
thing I did like was and and it was was
it deeply couched in no homo rhetoric, but particularly at
the beginning, yes, but when when at the beginning, when

(01:02:10):
Martin Lawrence tells Will Smith that he loves him, he's like,
you're my partner, I love you. Will Smith is like
no homo, no homo, no homo, and we're like much
and then but then at the end there's a little
friendship arc where Will Smith in the first and only
time any sort of toxic masculinity is overcome. In a

(01:02:32):
Michael Bay movie, Will Smith tells Martin Lawrence, you're my partner.
I love you. Are they standing over a dead body?
Of course they are. That makes it no homo. As
long as there's a man that they've just killed, then
we know that they're straight. I mean, if there wasn't
a dead bye, then then how do you know they're

(01:02:53):
not lovers? You know what I mean? There's also so
between this. In the middle of this arc there is
another weird no homo scene where I think he wouldn't
even necessarily catch it unless you had the subtitles on,
which is why I watch all my movies with subtitles.
Breg get it, you can read. I do have a
faster screen screenwriting from Boston University. You want to see

(01:03:18):
how I can read so good? I love watching Haylyn read. Honestly,
it's you watch it all day so you can make
money out of anything I watched read I pay for
Thank you for that. Um No. But there's this the
scene where they go into like a bodega and notable
actor Sean Talb. I'm not entirely sure how to say

(01:03:39):
his name, but he plays like the bodega owner and
he sees that Martin Lawrence and Will Smith both have
guns and he thinks he's about to get robbed, so
he pulls out a gun on them. But because he um,
English isn't his first language. The actor is Rani and

(01:04:00):
I don't know who what the character is supposed to be,
but it feels like there's some racist stereotypes real troped
out and that's like, I mean another I'm like, I
was surprised there wasn't more of that in a Michael
Bay movie because if like in a Transformers movie, they'll
be scenes like that in a row right. Also, it's Miami,

(01:04:20):
so they were ripe for making those scenes because it's
such a cultural melting pot that you can, you know,
insert whatever racial trope you want wherever you want. So
they really went, they really like pulled back. Yeah, and
I think still to date, the Transformers franchise is the
worst example of the highest concentration of Michael Bay racism.

(01:04:40):
And like not coincidentally that's the franchise he as the
most power rover um but yeah, that um, but any case,
so in this in this scene where we've got this
bodega owner who he's saying something like he's holding a
gun to them, and he's like, I will blow you,
meaning like I will blow you away with my gun.
And then Martin Lawrence is like blow me. No, you

(01:05:00):
can hunt me, but blow me. Like it's really weird.
It's really hard to arrive at the offensive joke they're
trying to make two called improv Yes, yes, wait, Martin
Lawres just had that at the top of his head.
How incredible there, Although at the end of that scene,
I like how that scene ends when Will Smith has

(01:05:22):
the gun and he's like, get me. Was likes and
You're like, damn it, Michael Bay, you got me, got
me at the end, But it was it was it
was racist and homophobic and then they and then they
somehow stuck the landing horrible. I think, well that I
think those lines were improvised, So it has nothing to
do with Michael Bay. It was it was Will and

(01:05:44):
Martin and skittles. I laughed. I laughed. A similar joke
is made in A similar racist joke is made in
this movie that is made in Transformers, where a character
speaks a few words of Spanish and then a character
who does not speak Spanish was like, what the hell
did you say? Um? English? Please? Especially in Miami, this

(01:06:08):
is especially ridiculous, especially working for the police. Right, So, yeah,
you ain't never had to speak to nobody in Spain.
You don't know what the word cajones means. You've never
heard that word before? Okay, one time? So when need
content too. But it is Michael Bay's favorite joke because
he keeps using it over and over. He thinks it's hilarious.

(01:06:31):
He tells he regales all the nineteen year olds he
hangs out with. Hilarious joke he came up with thirty
years ago. Literally, my favorite part of the movie is
here we go, ready for this? Okay, At the very beginning,
when Martin Lawrence and Will Smith are being carjacked, they're like, hey,
where cops? You're messing with cops right now? And the

(01:06:52):
car jackers like, oh, yeah, well, I'm a stand up
comedian and I I like that was like representation of
a man of a stand up comedian who's a man
admitting that he sucks at stand up comedy. Hasn't happened before.
Since I know, we need to see more of it. Incredible,
I forgot I really did like that too, Did you

(01:07:13):
guys know that Michael Bay's first job in film was
working on Raiders of the Lost Arc, where he was
like an intern on Raiders of the Lost Arc. Oh
my gosh, do you think he met Alfred Molina? He
better not of he there stayed a funk away from him.
I would be so pissed if they've met um just

(01:07:37):
the meeting, if they met him passing done. Uh. But so,
I guess this is another just like Michael Bay has
always been the worst. So he's living his really difficult
life in the valley and he gets this internship horrible
for him on one of the most famous movies of
all time, like so difficult, he's struggling. Uh, he's an

(01:07:59):
intern Raiders to have the Lost Dark And I guess
he spends his whole time on that movie being like
this movie is gonna fucking suck. And then when it
comes out he said, oh it was good. I want
to be a film director now too. And George and
George Lucas actually contributed to the Michael Bay oral history
and he was he was shady in a way that

(01:08:20):
I thought was funny. He said, Michael's films are identifiable.
It was like good for you, George Lucas. You know
when you see trash, you know what you want on
the New York sidewalk, and then you just get a
whiff of something that's like Michael Bay movie identifiable. You

(01:08:40):
know when you pass into Sharma, and you know when
you pass into Michael Bay. George Lucas out here being
a bitchy obstacle to Michael Bay. Can't believe it better
beat Teresa Wife. George Lucas channel that energy. I thought
that was really funny. Well, I hate that. This movie
is fun to watch. I know it, but now I'm like,

(01:09:00):
should I see the new one? It's not Michael Bay
doesn't appear to be involved at all? Is it still
written by three white guys? As far as I can tell, Yes,
it's a time honored bad voice tradition. It has to
be written by people who do not know what they're
talking about. The formula works. Yeah, yeah, exactly. They have
two new directors on. I mean, who knows, maybe maybe

(01:09:21):
it will be I'll use my amc A List stubs
membership to see it for free. I tried to unsign
up from that and then they're like you have to
stay for three months, and like well, now I have
to see Bad Boys three. Also, I do love just
like the grotesque waste of money in these movies. Because
in Bad Boys too, they have one of those cardboards
that you like deliver cars in, so you'll have like

(01:09:44):
twelve cars kind of stacked upon each other on a
big rig. They have one in Bad Boys to where
they like unloaded and then all the cars just start
shooting off of the truck and then their dodge and
the cars that are just flattened in the road. And
I was like, this is so much money, and um,
you know, and it's it's horrible to think about how
much money it is, the new back ninety million dollar budgets.

(01:10:07):
So I actually thought it would have more than that.
I'm like, that's cat's level up a building with that
much money. Probably with a computer, yeah, but I would
used to blow a real built Michael pag blew so
much that that was one of the things that they
like he mentioned was he like put dollars of his
own money to make a couple of extra cars explode,

(01:10:29):
Like he worked outside the budget of the spend his
meat load money. He's a black man, He's spend his
meat load money on bad boys explosions. That's what black
people have to do. They were like, we'll put you
in a movie, but you gotta bring some of your
own money. So he gets it, Michael play gets it.
He's got that Valley mentalent. Just I had the fact

(01:10:51):
the fact man, um, well, are there any other final thoughts?
I hate that this movie is fun. I know, but
it's fun and it's bad in so many ways, and
yet not Michael Bay's worst. As we've said before, I
would honestly say, of what I've seen, one of his best. Yeah,
I would send this is my favorite Michael Bay movie.

(01:11:12):
That's and and that's saying that. I never thought I
would say that sentence. And I'm hor if I please
never like if anyone's out there trying to isolate that
clip can um, Yeah, yeah, we we reckon. We hope
that we've demonstrated that we understand why the shortcomings and
the and the of its but it's fun to watch.

(01:11:34):
So we alluded earlier that it, I guess does pass
the Bechdel test. I think even without asterisks it passes
in that scene because I was ready to be like,
like the scene prior where Max and Lois are talking
there's like two lines where they're not explicitly talking about
a man, but the context of the conversation still about

(01:11:56):
a man's Like, maybe it doesn't pass. But then the
next scene, I'm pretty sure they're talking about uh, their
relationship with each other, the roommates. I'm a photographer, I
owe you one. What is she over for? We don't know,
but it's referenced. Yeah, true. But then they do start
talking about Little Smith's character towards the end of that conversation,
but there is, yeah, that two line exchange at least
that technically passes. And then also Julie and Teresa talk

(01:12:19):
to each other, but I think they're talking only about
men because Teresa shows up and not Mike Lowry's condo,
and she's like, is my husband here? And Julie's like,
is he the short one or the tall one? Objectifying men?
It Michael Bay a woke king you heard it here first,

(01:12:41):
and probably has good politics too. You can quote us
on oh right, that brings us to our nipple scale
zero to five nipples based on its representation of women,
it still gets like a point to five. Yeah, Like
you can't give it, really, I'll give it. I'll give

(01:13:03):
it and and and keep my sliding scale because Michael
give it. Point five because Tailani got to make a
few just drove the truck. For she shot a gun once,
didn't ruin Club Hell. Yes, we didn't talk about that.
She shot a gun one time. She had a club
in Miami. It's called Club Hell. It's on brand. But anyway,

(01:13:27):
so point five because Taloni made decisions and they didn't
make her kiss at the end. Everything else bad bad,
bad bad bad bad boys. Look, man, I gotta I
gotta give it a one nipple, okay, because it's got
a special place in my heart. I'm gonna even make
the nipple maybe slightly darkened aerola for black man, Michael

(01:13:48):
Bay and stay stay strong, king, Like I mean, I
did enjoy that she didn't take I didn't have to kiss.
She got to talk a good deal. I mean, there
is one scene. Unfortunately it's very sad. It doesn't truly
like surpass the Bechdel test, but it does pass the

(01:14:09):
bare minimum and requirements. Um and then also you know,
I never saw titties. I mean she did have to
oil and see her underwear. She falls, she falls down
at one point and she's wearing a really short skirt
and then like her skirt flies up and you see
her underwear. I'll blame that on the wind. But again
she's still styled more more respectfully than we see him later. Michael. Yeah,

(01:14:30):
it's not like, oh, I'm running from the you know,
cartel in my bra for some reason. No, Will Smith
is the He's his shirt is somehow always unbuttoned, and
the wind is billowing and he's he's got to always
be oily and are all single people just oily? And
I'm trying to let the people know I'm out here,

(01:14:51):
you know, I mean, you gotta you gotta be looped up,
you gotta be catching losing herself as we speak. Yes, um,
sam friend of the show, sam Ike brought up in
our Men in Black episodes something that I think about often,
because he said that the female lead in that movie
does not kiss Tessa. Is that her name? No? No?

(01:15:13):
Sorry not? Yeah? So the n nine, the nine eight
or ninety seven first Men in Black movie, and it's
Linda Florentino, right, so she we do not see her
kiss anyone in that movie either. But sam Ike speculated
that it's because the male lead that would have been

(01:15:37):
made the most sense to pair her with was black,
and he speculated that audiences wouldn't have wanted to see
a interrational kiss. So I wonder if that is why
there's no kissing in this movie, because it's the same
actor Will Smith that movie. Damn it, and Michael had

(01:15:58):
to take someone nipple back hairs. I mean, this is reulation,
but it's not far fetched. I don't remember Sam saying
that as well. Yeah, yeah, I don't think it's far fetched.
I mean also in the nineties, and it wasn't the
two thousands of the nineties when Saved the Last Dance
came out. I think it was maybe two Yeah, but
that was still when the plot of a movie was
we're in an interracial relationship. That was the whole plot

(01:16:20):
of the movie. Yeah, two thousand one, so like thank you,
So like that's you know, still like the nineties. Two
thousand Want is so super close in time periods, so
that makes sense. At the end of the movie, they're like, look,
white people will watch two negroes. It's just like, how
to let a black man be president. They're like, he's
still a man, but we don't want to see him
sucking on women. Okay, let's let's see his big old
lips on our women. So that makes sense to me. Yeah,

(01:16:43):
that's shitty. I I thought they were just respecting her.
Nona would doubt always go with racist that. Yeah, alright,
well shout out to Sam Mike before probably correctly calling that.
We thought that maybe that Michael Bay had made a
choice that was nice to women, but it turns out
it was racist. So uh so, yeah, my nipple, I'm

(01:17:05):
gonna give it. I'm gonna give two point five or sorry,
what point to five? Oh my god, cancel me. I
gotta go down the half. Okay, yeah, yeah, I'm gonna
go point to five because of like the two things
that the Julie character gets to do. But everything, as

(01:17:29):
we've discussed, is just like framing women as obstacles, framing
women as damsels, framing women as frigid shrews. A lot
of you know, racist stereotypes are employed in this movie,
a lot of no homo moments, I mean, just runs
the whole gamut of problematic stuff. Uh and it is
a Michael Bay movie, so we are not surprised. But

(01:17:51):
it is fun. So I hate yeah, yeah, so you
know not and I think it's mostly fun because of
Martin Awrence and Will Smith. It's fully the performances that
make this movie fun. Let's not gives Michael Bead deserves camera.
You know, you know what, I really think it was

(01:18:11):
the extra car exploding that really took it over the
top for me. But yeah, yeah, it doesn't fare well
this movie. Um, Lacy, thank you so much for being here.
Always such a treat. Come back anytime. Where can we
Where can we find you? Online? Guys, you can find
me at d I V A l A c I

(01:18:31):
DVA Lacey on all platforms. And guys, if you want
to hear more of my voice, scam got his pot
um and if you have any scams you want to
email me. Scam got his pot at gmail dot com
and scam got his pot on all platform So good.
You can follow us bad Boys. Oh god, take that
back right now? Leave it at spectel cast on social

(01:18:56):
media platforms. You can subscribe to our Patreon ak Matreon.
It's five dollars a month. You get two bonus episodes
plus our entire back log of episodes, bad Boy backlog,
A bad Boy backlog, Say that three times fast, and
uh what else? We got? Rate and review us on

(01:19:17):
Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast, and check
for our website for upcoming tour dates March as well.
March as well, but look out for that bitchy obstacle teacher.
Someone reminds me to make that um and uh yeah,
we love you so much. Bad boys, Bad boys. What's
you gonna do? What's you're gonna do when they come
for you by