A List Of Things Thrown Five Minutes Ago

DID THEY SEE THE SAME MOVIE? Just saw this during lunch: the Boston Globe's Wesley Morris, on "Bad Boys II":

This action-figure syndrome had me wondering how I'd react were I, say, a Miami cop on a freeway with cars hurtling toward me at 200 miles an hour. Rather than going blank and dutiful like Carrie-Anne Moss, I'd like to think I'd be a lot more like Martin Lawrence in ''Bad Boys II'': a teary, neurotic mess.

Lawrence spends every testosterone-drenched set piece of producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay's action opera wincing and shrieking like a Chihuahua on a roller coaster. Realism is the last thing you'd expect to find in this much-anticipated, desperately needed sequel to Bay's 1995 hit, but Lawrence is a Discovery Channel special on being terrified. . . . .

Lawrence, for his part, does the movie's heavy emotional lifting. Since his notorious nervous breakdown a few summers ago, his obscene, cartoonish assaults have turned into a searing, comic vulnerability. He's now a drama queen of Diana Ross's depth and Susan Hayward's breadth. And ''Bad Boys II'' is his ''I Want to Live!'' He screams. He weeps. He mistakenly swallows Ecstasy. It's the performance of the season. And in that pill-popping instant, the picture becomes his ''Lady Sings the Blues.''