Narcs Marcus Burnett (Lawrence) and Mike Lowrey (Smith) return to lead a task force trying to stem the huge flow of Ecstasy pouring into Miami. The sequel to the 1994 hit BAD BOYS serves up a healthy dosage of bullets and blowups

There are a few things I look for in a movie when I consider whether I feel like watching it or not. Unfortunately, neither Martin Lawrence, Will Smith or Michael Bay are any of those things. Now since JoBlo doesn't really let me pick and choose, I usually do my best to flush all these bad preconceptions out of my head before hitting the "play" button on my DVD player and I usually manage to make the most of it. Having said that, I'm only human and I couldn't really push all of my feelings toward Martin Lawrence out of my mind. I did however end up enjoying some aspects of this film, mainly those that involved explosions and gunfights, as well as those involving Gabrielle Union's underused cleavage. Frankly, I'm pretty sure that's what the film was trying to sell us because it sure wasn't pushing a strong plot as its main attribute and at an obscene 147-minute running time, I needed something to get my mind off the two overexposed loudmouths starring in the film.

I won't really say much about either Smith nor Lawrence simply because there's not much to say. They play the same characters they usually play in any other movie and if you're "into" them, then you'll get a kick out of this. I don't think this film had much to do with expanding their range rather than expanding their wallets (and kudos to them for that!) The bad guy, Johnny Tapia (Jordi Molla), is actually the most interesting character in the film and Molla plays him way over the top which works at times and doesn't at others. You shouldn't go in there looking for any award wining performances though. There's only one reason to put up with Michael Bay's brand of generic, repetitive schlock and that's the generic, repetitive schlock of stunts and chaos. There's plenty of action for everyone and although it does wear out during the film's last 45 minutes, it does serve its purpose of justifying whatever reason you had to give this film a shot in the first place.

Video: I'll give to Caesar what belongs to him: although the movie didn't do much for me, it looked nothing short of awesome on this 2.40:1 anamorphic widescreen DVD. The picture is as crisp as it gets and there's no shortage of sequences in the movie that will show off its big budget and fiery stunts.

Audio: Although the unnerving hip-hop sounds in this thing grate on your nerves like ten chalks on ten chalkboards, there's no shortage of quality here either as the 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround. The top-notch stuff also comes through in the floor-shaking action sequences.

Mercifully, the vapid trio spared us a commentary track. The last thing I would want to do is to listen to three people, who I consider to be everything that's wrong with movies, chat for 147 minutes about how great this fluff is. There is, however, enough stuff to tide us over until Bad Boys III is unleashed upon us (no doubt co-starring Smith's ever-annoying wife Jada).

To begin with, a set of seven deleted scenes is presented to us on a silver platter. There's about six minutes worth of footage in all, which means they basically consist of our two heroes blurting out some inane things that are supposed to either be funny or entertaining. You'll notice how none of them are supposed to advance a plot in any way. Be sure to put that silver platter in the dishwasher when you're done.

A couple of standard featurettes discussing stunts (9:00) and visual effects (12:00) can be found next. They're not too bad, although much like trailers, they're becoming standard on DVD's and it seems like no one is really making an effort to add anything new. That's not really a particular knock against this DVD though, rather a comment on the whole "featurettes" situation in DVD's.

Next up is a "music" video by some character by the name of Jay-Z (no doubt short for Jeffrey Zimmerman) who apparently seems to think himself an artist of some type. Last time I checked, it took more than being able to string a couple of words that rhyme together to be considered a singer, but if that's what it takes to make the "bling bling" nowadays...then count me in!

The following stop gets off at sequence breakdowns. Once there, you can check a handful of scenes through various methods, those being the finished scene, the on-set footage, the storyboards or the script. You can spend a fair amount of time here, but it's only mildly entertaining. After that, you can listen to 18 short production diaries, which are basically little vignettes documenting the filmmaking process. I'll listen to any jokes about Michael Bay explaining how to make movies. You can also find the theatrical trailer to this and many other films.

There's no real reason to go out and get what basically amounts to an overlong music video with two stars who've both been there and done that...several times. If you're in the mood for some action though, you might pick it up as the second film on 2-for-1 night, but even then, the length is a huge turnoff and I'm pretty sure you can find a better way to spend 2 and a half hours.