The animated heist movie The Bad Guys steals from all the right places

polygon.com:

Two major signatures of DreamWorks Animation productions are frenetic action sequences and “adult” pop-culture references. Not all their movies heavily feature both, though many do — this is a studio that turned The Boss Baby, a fanciful children’s picture book about sibling rivalry, into a yammering, scattered comedy with Glengarry Glen Ross references and, in its recent sequel, an explosives-laden, highly destructive vehicle chase.

The new DreamWorks cartoon The Bad Guys is also based on a series of children’s books, and it seems to follow a similarly noisy pattern: It has an opening scene derived from Pulp Fiction or something out of Steven Soderbergh, leading straight into, yes, a raucous car chase. And of course, Mr. Wolf (Sam Rockwell) gets the audience up to speed by addressing them directly: What would DreamWorks movies be without narrated exposition in the first 10 minutes?

And yet, since this is a heist movie, director Pierre Perifel knows it’s the details that matter. That opening scene, where Mr. Wolf and his best friend Mr. Snake (Marc Maron) chat in a diner about Mr. Snake’s hatred of birthdays and why guinea pigs taste so good, doesn’t reference Pulp Fiction by whipping out “Misirlou” on the soundtrack or mentioning the Royale with Cheese. Instead, the scene takes its time, letting the characters banter before revealing, in a single animated “take,” that the diner staff’s and patrons have all been cowering off-screen as the fearsome bad guys finish eating. The virtual camera then follows Mr. Wolf and Mr. Snake across the street, where they knock over a bank.

The freneticism of the ensuing car chase is leavened by the intentionally choppy, mix-and-match animation style. The characters’ designs look vaguely