This is a computer-animated DreamWorks crime comedy based on children's books written by Aaron Blabey. It's about a gang of criminals known as The Bad Guys that is made up of a wolf, a tarantula, a shark, a piranha, and a snake - five animal outcasts that often cause humans to run with fear, which we see happen more than once. Snake even talks about how snakes are outcasts and to humans he is just a scary, good-for-nothing monster. That's true, and it's basically what Snakes in Movies is all about, but it's also what got him the part in the movie, so he shouldn't complain too much. Maybe he'll get a sequel. Each animal has a different job in the gang - the wolf is the brains and the driver, the tarantula is a computer expert, the piranha is the muscle, the shark is a master of disguises, and The snake is the safe cracker.
Snake is voiced by Marc Maron in a role he was born to play - an old, world-weary, cranky, sarcastic grouch. The snake is drawn fairly realistically but he's also heavily anthropomorphized: he has human teeth; he has eyebrows and front-facing eyes; he can stand upright and move that way, he wears a shirt and a hat, and he can hear and talk. Since he doesn't have hands he has a prehensile tail that he uses to hold a glass and to turn the combination wheel on a safe. This is all typical for animated animals. People won't try to relate to animated animals unless they appear human, plus it's more amusing to think of them with human characteristics - the tarantula is especially amusing when she types on several computer keyboards at once with her multiple arms. I liked that we see the snake shed his skin during a heist when he is crawling in an air duct, and also that, when he's in disguise during a heist, he wears a top hat and a coat with fake arms that hang down limply to make him look human. He also craves guinea pigs to eat and and tells the others that he can taste air, both of which are realistic for a snake.
The first part of the movie deals with the gang when they are actually bad guys and the humans they live among are terrified of them, but as happens in all movies about lovable bad guys, they become good guys in the end. We've seen this so many times before, but am I the only one who always roots for the outcasts to stay bad? They're usually more fun as outsiders. |