Subject: Review: Men in Black II (2002)

From: Jon Popick <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 19:13:13 -0000

Planet Sick-Boy: http://www.sick-boy.com 
"We Put the SIN in Cinema" 

© Copyright 2002 Planet Sick-Boy. All Rights Reserved. 

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

==========
X-RAMR-ID: 32302
X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 734733
X-RT-TitleID: 1114604
X-RT-SourceID: 595
X-RT-AuthorID: 1146
X-RT-RatingText: 5/10