Men in Black II Review
by Jon Popick (jpopick AT sick-boy DOT com)July 11th, 2002
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We've been awfully fortunate this summer thus far. There haven't been any over-hyped turkeys like Pearl Harbor, Godzilla or Wild Wild West stinking up the place. Instead, we've been dazzled by Minority Report and Spider-Man, and cheered the maturity of films like The Bourne Identity and The Sum of All Fears (not to mention the upcoming Road To Perdition). Disney's Lilo & Stitch was one of their best summer flicks in years, and the new Star Wars installment didn't even suck too much ass.
The sequels aren't half bad either, at least if you're talking about Men In Black II. The good news is that it's a lot better than the original. The bad news is that the original wasn't anything to write home about. More good news is that the film is really short (87 minutes). More bad news is that MIB2's quick running time probably has a lot to do with the front-end deals gobbled up by the two stars, director and producers (they're taking 50% of the first $200 million it grosses, so a shorter film means more screenings, perhaps helping it to reach that barrier more quickly). Other good news? Michael Jackson has a cameo. Other bad news? He isn't playing an alien.
At the end of the 1997 film, Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones, Space Cowboys) had his mind erased (I prayed someone would neuralize me right around that same time). As MIB2 opens he's working as a Postmaster in a small Massachusetts town, while former partner Agent J (Will Smith, Ali) has pretty much become the same efficient Men in Black agent that K used to be before he got zapped. The new film starts with a pre-credits Peter Graves-hosted clip from one of MIB's operations from the '70s. There's some nonsense about Kylothians and the Light of Zartha, but it basically explains how K saved the world back in 1977.
Flash forward to present day, when the whole Kylothians/Light of Zartha thing has once again reared its ugly head. A tiny yet extremely dangerous alien named Serleena arrives in a ship straight out of Pikmin, transforms itself into a Victoria's Secret model (Lara Flynn Boyle, The Practice) and proceeds to search for the Light of Zartha. According to MIB Chief Z (Rip Torn, Freddy Got Fingered), the only agent capable of stopping Serleena is K, so J is sent to Massachusetts to un-neuralize him and bring him up to speed. See? Now they've swapped roles. Once the pupil, J has now become the teacher. So MIB2 is, like, a whole new film, right?
Not really. Some of the same characters are back, like Tony Shalhoub's pawnshop owner Jeebs and Frank the Dog (voiced by Tim Blaney), while the absence of others (like Linda Fiorentino) are casually touched upon as if they barely ever existed. David Cross is here again, but he plays a different role. There are some new folks, too, though most of them (Patrick Warburton and Johnny Knoxville) appeared in director Barry Sonnenfeld's last film (Big Trouble). Rosario Dawson (Sidewalks of New York) is cast as J's love interest, though there isn't enough time devoted to this subplot to make it work (ditto for J's depression, which is only briefly touched upon in the first third of the film). In addition to the Michael Jackson cameo, we also see a lot of Martha Stewart, which is weird because of that whole talking dog thing in Sonnenfeld's Trouble.
Acting-wise, Smith is at his comedic best. I usually can't stand the sight of him, but he made me laugh several times. Watching Jones is like watching paint dry, and Boyle looks more like Sherilyn Fenn than Sherilyn Fenn does these days. The scene-stealer here is Frank the Dog, who pulls off the only successful use of "Who Let the Dogs Out?" in the history of modern cinema. On the downside, the product placement might be the most blatant ever (MIB2 often plays like a super-long commercial for Sprint - maybe all they would pay for was a 87-minute movie). One couldn't expect anything other than an uneven film from a script cobbled together by the funny Robert Gordon (Galaxy Quest, Addicted To Love) and the opposite-of-funny Barry Fanaro (Benson, The Golden Girls, Archie Bunker's Place).
1:27 - PG-13 for sci-fi action violence and some provocative humor
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