Men in Black 2 (2002)
Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld
Written by Robert Gordon, Barry Fanaro
Starring Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Rosario Dawson, Lara Flynn Boyle, Johnny Knoxville
Release Date July 3rd, 2002
Published July 2nd, 2002
The original Men In Black was a fresh and funny surprise. The film came out of nowhere and based on its charm and its appealing stars, the film scored 600+ million dollars at the box office. Charm, however, can carry a film only so far and it is no match for the disease known as sequelitis. If you think about it I bet you could count the number of good sequels on one hand. Sequelitis is why almost all sequels suck. Even the great Will Smith seems no match for it.
MIB2 has Smith and Tommy Lee Jones back in their black suits and Ray Bans. Of course if you recall the original, Jones' agent K was neuralized and returned to a normal life. Smith as Agent J is investigating the murder of an alien by another alien who has taken the form of Lara Flynn Boyle. Only K knows the secret to stopping this new alien threat.
So J and his new partner Frank the Dog go to a small Massachusetts town where K is now a postal worker, a situation ripe for comedy but not taken advantage of in this film. Once K is returned to headquarters he is to be de-neuralized, but once he gets his memory back he still can't remember what happened to the object that the bad guys are looking for. K's memory block is the film’s only clever subplot as the duo search the clues K left for himself in case of such an emergency.
Where the original MIB had a bouncy pace with a new surprise around every corner MIB 2 has just the opposite; dull, lifeless transitional scenes that lead nowhere. There are no surprises in the alien creatures created by the effects team and the legendary Rick Baker. It's probably George Lucas's fault, his aliens are so visually interesting that most everything else pales in comparison. Lucas's Star Wars creatures make MIB 2's aliens look like the work of amateurs.
The biggest disappointment about MIB 2 is director Barry Sonnenfeld who directs the film with a dull cynicism. The film is constructed of dull transitory scenes broken up every 5 or 10 minutes by a special effect, probably to keep the audience from falling asleep. The film plays like a commercial for itself. The few laughs of the film are easy to cut out and put into a commercial or a trailer, with no need for context or much of a setup.
The film is well crafted but not memorable. MIB 2 is the kind of film that five years from now will be airing on TBS Superstation; you’ll stop for a moment then change the channel when a commercial comes on and maybe flick back later to see if it's still on.
