They are mean but we love them! The Bad Guys by Pierre Perifel come to life beautifully under the banner of Dreamworks studios. A wolf dubbed in French by Pierre Niney is the leader of a pack of reputedly dangerous animals (a tarantula, a piranha, a snake and a shark) who commit ingenious heists.
“ The Bad Guysit’s a bit of Quentin Tarantino for children, confides Pierre Perifel to 20 minutes. I thought a lot about Reservoir Dogs and pulp Fiction but also to Kill Bill. “As the director of Django Unchained, Pierre Perifel is a cinephile and has mixed all sorts of cinematographic influences into his story, which becomes original thanks to these finely balanced references. “The youngest will probably not recognize the nods to Baby Driver, Snap Where Ocean’s Eleven which will be able to make the older ones smile”, specifies the French filmmaker.
Cinephile and inspired
“The hardest part was making these critters cute,” explains Pierre Perifel. Then came the challenge of animating not-so-obvious animals, like a spider that has lots of legs and a snake that doesn’t. To complicate matters further, this little world is forced to turn nice after being caught in the middle of a forfeit during an awards show. A political vixen and a billionaire guinea pig watch over their passage to the camp of good.
Graphically, Pierre Perifel drew his inspiration from the books The villains by Aaron Bbley but also in many animated films featuring animals with human attitudes. “I worked as an animator on the saga Kung Fu Panda, he explains. So it’s a style that I know well. Here again, the filmmaker has managed to innovate on a theme that one might have thought worn out. Its charismatic heroes don’t fit the Dreamworks mould. “I thought a lot about Franquin but also about Akira Toriyama and Uderzo for their drawings,” he insists. And this cocktail mixing the aesthetics of Gaston Lagaffe, dragonball and Asterix is amazing on screen.
“In this too, I am close to Tarantino, admits Pierre Perifel. I drew on what I love to make a first film that brings together many of my fan passions. And it works: The Bad Guys is a joyful film whose abundant rhythm takes the viewer into a festival of suspense and bursts of laughter. Looking forward to a second installment!