The latest and fourth Bad Boys movie, “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” is not much different than the previous three, other than this fourth movie is a continuation of the last one “Bad Boys for Life”, released in 2020.

Most remarkable about this film is that it seems that after over 2 years, Will Smith has survived the now infamous “Oscar face slap” of comedian Chris Rock, resulting in the highest high and lowest low in the entire history of show business, when Smith accepted the Oscar for “King Richard” in 2021. The weekend box office numbers for this movie will tell if most moviegoers have accepted Smith as a bankable star again.

This story, written by no less than 3 screenwriters, is about Mike Lowrey, played by Will Smith, and Marcus Burnett, played by Martin Lawrence trying to save the reputation of their late police captain Howard, played by Joe Pantoliano. It seems that Howard is being framed, by a master criminal McGrath, played by Eric Dane. The story here is all over the place and convoluted – most likely because of the lack of coherent collaboration with the 3 screenwriters. In a desperate attempt to clear Captain Howard, Marcus and Mike are chased, blown up, attacked by alligators, and are in many shootouts, in a story that is mostly about creating action scenes and not about telling a good police story.

There is a sub-story about Marcus who almost dies of a heart attack, and while in near-death limbo meets Captain Howard in heaven who tells him “It is not your time yet”. After coming back to life, there are a series of scenes and conversations about Marcus almost dying which are an attempt at humor. Almost all of these scenes fail to be interesting or funny.

Most of the same actors from the last movie return for this one, including Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, and Paola Núñez, with a new replacement actress Tasha Smith, playing Marcus Burnett’s wife, another example of missing continuity to a previous movie because the previous actor either wanted too much money or was not available. In my opinion, this new actress did not work in her role as Marcus’ wife.

Tiffany Hadish is also in this film, in a scene where she plays some kind of a Madam at a strip club, where it seems like she was just thrown into this movie to increase the box office, where her presence was completely unnecessary within this story.

Within the comedic scenes in this fourth installment, in almost all cases they are all created by Martin Lawrence, who has a face and presence that makes whatever he does funny. There is no denying that Smith and Lawrence have onscreen chemistry that since 1995 has produced a significant police-buddy franchise.

The reasons for the poor Rotten Tomatoes ratings of only 64% are largely due to the poor screenplay, and insane disconnected action scenes, trying to unravel the framing of Captain Howard. Time will tell if this latest movie kills the franchise or if they will make a 5th film.

My rating for this film is a passable 70% and a moderate recommendation, mostly for Martin Lawrence’s comedic scenes.