The "Sickening" Will Smith Movie Roger Ebert Absolutely Hated
Will Smith's post-slap comeback is still up in the air, but for nearly 20 years, the guy was untouchable. He was the summer box office king — racking up hit after hit like clockwork. Even when he dropped the occasional dud (Seven Pounds, Collateral Beauty), he'd bounce right back with another $100 million opener.
In fact, Smith still holds a wild record: nine straight movies that each made over $100 million domestically. If you count past his cameo in Jersey Girl, the streak actually hits eleven. But not every critic was impressed — especially not Roger Ebert.
One of the films in that run was Bad Boys II, and Ebert despised it. Bad Boys II hit theaters in 2003, reuniting Smith and Martin Lawrence for another round of loud, sweaty buddy cop mayhem — this time with Michael Bay given a blank check and zero restraint. The result: a $130 million explosion-fest that made $138.6 million in the U.S. and $273.3 million worldwide. Financially, it was a monster. It also cranked Michael Bay's signature chaos to an 11 — and Ebert was not here for it.
He called the movie a "bloated, unpleasant assembly-line extrusion," packed with "a lot of chases and a lot of killings and explosions." He wasn't just annoyed by the excess — he was offended by it.
In particular, he tore into a third-act sequence where Smith and Lawrence plow through a Cuban favela with a humvee, flattening homes and property like it's a video game bonus round. Ebert called it "sickening", pointing out the complete lack of regard for the fictional residents, their homes, or basic human decency.
To him, the whole film reeked of contempt for its audience — "carelessness," he said, that treated moviegoers like they wouldn't notice (or care about) the nonstop body count.
His verdict? Everyone who worked on Bad Boys II should "do some community service." That's not a joke — he literally wrote that.
To be fair, fans of "Bayhem" loved it for the same reasons Ebert hated it: over-the-top action, carnage without consequence, and two leads having a blast while blowing everything up. But for anyone not into 147 minutes of sensory assault, it was... a lot.
So while Bad Boys II made a pile of money, it also landed squarely in Roger Ebert's cinematic burn book — filed under: "sickening."