At one point in “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” Miami police detective Mike Lowrey enters a panic attack-induced trance while bullets are flying. There’s only one way out. Martin Lawrence smacks Will Smith in the face not once, not twice, but three times, so that the man with top billing can shake it off and get back to the killing.

Chris Rock is nowhere in sight in this movie. But at that moment, the footage spinning in the audience’s mind alongside what they’re watching is a flashback to the wallopalooza at the 2022 Oscars, when Smith over-avenged a “G.I. Jane” joke emcee Rock made at Jada Pinkett Smith’s expense.

The “Bad Boys” franchise is all about righteous payback, so when Lawrence triple-slaps Smith it’s the two-years-later comeuppance the audience knew would come someday, somehow. If the movie’s about anything other than franchise maintenance in a dark time, it’s about karma. (Lawrence’s character, Marcus Burnett, undergoes a near-death experience and can’t shut up about past lives.) If those slaps are photographed and edited with the artless blunt force and cramped, cellphone-screen-friendly framing of nearly everything else in “Ride or Die,” too bad. Those are matters of technique and finesse, neither of which matters here.

Millions remain loyal to the “Bad Boys” vehicles. They enjoy watching Smith and Lawrence do their thing. I enjoy watching them do their thing. But this time, the thing comes with a little extra strain, sloppier mood swings, a grimmer, more numbing array of slaughter. I wish more of “Ride or Die” were like its final 90 seconds, in which three characters are arguing about who’s going to use the grill. Funny, extraneous, nothing much, but a recent preview screening audience seemed especially grateful for the laughs on the way out. Getting there in a genre mashup this mashed-up — a killer giant-sized albino alligator? Sure, fine — is considerably less than half the fun.

Despite its initially rosy box office projections, now downgraded, “Ride or Die” feels about right for this frankly shaken moment in 2024 moviegoing. Habitual multiplex attendance has been eroded by uneasily merged companies formerly in the business of making movies. Now they’re in the business of figuring out streaming platform survival tactics first, and what to throw in the stream second. The fate of theatrical exhibition runs a distant third.

Still, “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” constitutes an old-fashioned distribution model, the way “Bad Boys for Life” did in early 2020, just before the pandemic. Directors Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, known as Adil & Bilall, return for duty. The script pits our bad men (Smith and Lawrence are a combined 114 years old now; I’m calling them men) against their corrupt Miami law enforcement ranks, mobbed up with drug cartels. Lowrey marries his physical therapist, Christine (Melanie Liburd, who spends much of the film as a battered, anguished hostage); Tasha Smith replaces Theresa Randle as Burnett’s wife, Theresa.

Returning players include Vanessa Hudgens as good cop Kelly, Joe Pantoliano as the late, dream-sequences edition of Capt. Howard; and Jacob Scipio as Lowrey’s son, whose beef with his dad periodically surfaces after Lowrey and Burnett are framed for murder, pursued by every bounty-hunting gang member with a weapon in Florida.

The script constitutes a string of bush-league errors we’re not supposed to care about, starting with the audience getting way, way out ahead of the characters regarding who’s hiding what. Do we go to franchise items like this, or put up with them on the couch, simply for the white-noise reassurance of gunfire, fireballs, trash talk and periodic reminders that, like the “Fast and Furious” movies, it’s all about family? I wonder.

There are other ways to approach a movie like this. How about making it funny when it’s trying to be? “Ride or Die” makes you pathetically grateful for any comic impulse, such as Lowrey and Burnett running into a Confederate flag-waving enclave of yahoo racists and improvising a Reba McEntire song at gunpoint. Smile, cringe, whatever, it provides a break from the generic, arrhythmic action beats, the witless raunch (Tiffany Haddish, wasted in a one-scene cameo), the clinically alluring gun porn.

Directors such as Adil & Bilall, who try everything and nothing matches, might want to check out some ’80s titles for visual and tonal inspiration, starting with Walter Hill’s “48 Hrs.” and Martin Brest’s “Beverly Hills Cop.” Those movies worked, and work still, even if they spun off terrible, heartless sequels. The originals remain super-solid examples of how substantially different action comedies can do justice to both action and comedy. There are more recent examples, but since the nervous 2024 screen economy is stuck in a perpetual time loop with whatever worked before, whether the new script works or not, these two Eddie Murphy ringers are a good place to start.

We can talk plenty about the visual aggravations of “Ride or Die.” But everything has a chance to go fundamentally wrong with a movie long before the first day of filming. If a movie doesn’t care enough about its selling points, aka the stars, to give them decent lines more than twice per hour, the “bad” in “Bad Boys” ends up being the wrong kind of bad. And, in a truly sad way, its own review.

‘Bad Boys: Ride or Die’

1.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for strong violence, language throughout and some sexual references)

Running time: 1:55

How to watch: In theaters June 7

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Sam (Rachel Sennott) is depressed. Dissociative and disconnected, she spends her days bed-rotting, microwaving lunch meat and searching her name on Twitter. Never mind getting onstage at Toronto’s Comedy Bar, where she used to titillate audiences with her material about sex, dating, shopping and periods, Sam can’t even leave the house.

Sam doesn’t feel funny anymore. Her brain is too occupied by her PTSD. Her roommates Paige and Philip (Sabrina Jalees and Caleb Hearon) are sympathetic but tired, her ex-boyfriend Noah (Ennis Esmer) is confused and sad. To make matters worse, Brooke (Olga Petsa), the teenager Sam used to nanny, has been reported missing. The last time Sam saw her was when Brooke showed up on her doorstep after lobbing a rock through her window in a drunken rage, calling her a liar.

This is the situation into which we are dropped at the outset of Ally Pankiw’s “I Used to Be Funny,” a story of trauma, catharsis and stand-up comedy. Through a jarring nonlinear narrative composed of flashbacks, memories and the harsh reality of the present, we will wind our way through Sam’s broken psyche to piece together the puzzle of what happened. Sadly, it’s almost too obvious from the outset.

Sennott, who got her start in stand-up comedy, but has become an indie film darling with genre-spanning films like “Shiva Baby,” “Bodies Bodies Bodies” and “Bottoms,” has demonstrated she can hold her own as an actor. But “I Used to Be Funny” is her most dramatically demanding role yet. It’s a stretch, and she just manages it, but proves she can lead a movie as the emotional anchor in a role that demands a wide range.

The film is a character study in contrasts, glimpsed in moments over the course of a few years. The dead-eyed, bedridden Sam is a far cry from the easygoing young woman who interviews for an au pair job with a Toronto police officer, Cameron (Jason Jones), to care for his 12-year-old daughter Brooke, while her mother is hospitalized with a terminal illness. Though Brooke is too old for a nanny or babysitter, Sam becomes a crucial presence in her life, a big sister, friend and sometimes surrogate mother.

In flashbacks, Sam’s nonchalant charisma conveys a relaxed and confident young woman, but in Sennott’s performance, we can see the careful effort required of Sam to maintain this outward demeanor, charming, assuaging and placating those around her — especially men. She wants to prove she can hold her own, that she is funny, that she is worthy of attention, but this kind of humorous soothing is also a survival mechanism, a safety strategy that women have honed over years of socialization.

Sam used to joke in her set that her flirty move on dates is to make men pinky promise they won’t murder her. Making light of violence against women is part of her act, castrating its power, denaturing the sting. Then she becomes paralyzed by actual violence, and Pankiw slowly reveals the events to us as Sam becomes more willing to open her mind to the memories, facing her demons simply because she can’t do anything else.

Pankiw has been honing her screenplay for over a decade, and while some of the plot beats hew toward heightened melodrama within this lo-fi indie milieu, the writing itself is insightful, incisive and authentic. Sam’s guilt over her condition, believing herself unworthy of kindness and love, is deeply relatable. Casting real comedians like Sennott, Jalees, Hearon and Esmer also makes for dialogue that feels real, and funny, their irrepressible riffing a natural part of their conversations. And Sennott is ably matched by Petsa, a fantastic young actor, in navigating the emotional roller coaster of this complicated story.

Pankiw keeps the visual style gritty and low-key, with understated but lovely cinematography by Nina Djacic. The formal experimentation is relegated to the edit and story structure, which unfolds in jagged ellipticals, mimicking a fickle, troubled mind. Many of the uncomfortable ideas are explored in Sam’s comedy, a masterful way for Pankiw to tackle these themes. In her film debut, she delivers a full, and fulfilling, narrative arc that is anchored by a surprisingly complex performance from Sennott. Rooted in place, character and emotional truth. “I Used to Be Funny” is a rare indie gem worth discovering.

‘I Used to be Funny’

3 stars (out of 4)

No MPA rating (some swearing, sex, and teen drinking and drug use)

Running time: 1:45

How to watch: In theaters on Friday, June 7

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