and
MEN IN BLACK II
*** (out of ****)
Starring Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith, Rip Torn, Tony Shalhoub, and Tim Blaney.
Directed by Barry Sonnefeld, from the comic books by Lowell Cunningham.
MiB: Also starring Linda Fiorentino and Vincent D’Onofrio.
Written for the screen by Edward Solomon
1997 PG13
MiBII: Also starring Rosario Dawson, Johnny Knoxville, and Patrick Warburton.
Written for the screen by Robert Gordon and Barry Fanaro
2002 PG13
“Men in Black” is an example of the Hollywood entertainment machine at its finest: silly, fast, drowned in special effects, and completely apolitical, with explosions and one-liners every eighty or ninety seconds. Like “The Mummy” (1996), “Men in Black” is also a lot of fun. It doesn’t take itself seriously for an instant as it follows the cheerfully goofy adventures of secret agents K (Tommy Lee Jones) and J (Will Smith) as they make certain that the sizeable extraterrestrial population living on Earth is safe, secret, and not a threat to the world. The aliens in “MiB” come in all shapes, sizes, and expenses. The MiBs, like a cosmic police force, attempt to keep an especially vicious alien from leading to the world’s destruction. “Men in Black II” is pretty much the same movie as the original “MiB” all over again, this time with a new intergalactic threat and a new endangered woman to rescue.
What really makes the two “Men in Black” movies so likeable is the easy rapport between leads Smith and Jones. Jones is deathly, implacably serious, even in the face of absurdity, and is thoroughly unimpressed by all the extraterrestrials. He speaks quickly when describing the beasts and sounds, with his Southern accent and complete confidence, more like he’s talking about car parts that beings from another world. His main persuasive technique is to stare unblinkingly until his squirming subject gives in. Smith is just as eager to get the job done but is a little scatterbrained and prone to making wisecracks. Most action movies try to have a character like Smith to make fun of everything; some movies have good jokers, and some have bad. Smith, as Agent J, is one of the good ones.
“MiB” follows Smith’s introduction into the Men in Black agency and his first case as Jones’ partner. The first half of the film is devoted to Jones showing Smith around, and the second half follows their conflict with a giant alien cockroach played by Vincent D’Onofrio. Rather, D’Onofrio plays the farmer whose skin is ripped off and used as a disguise by the giant alien cockroach. D’Onofrio, who played Orson Welles in Tim Burton’s “Ed Wood,” plays his alien as a critter not quite fitting inside his human host, and wallows in physical humor and funny, growly voices.
“Men in Black II” is, as I said, basically the same film, this time with the roles of J and K reversed. This time around, because his memory was erased at the end of the first film, Jones is the newcomer, and Smith is the veteran. That is, until Jones has his memory restored. We see the same menagerie of interplanetary beasties, we see the same high production values used to create the weapons, equipment, and offices of the MiBs, and we get director Barry Sonnenfeld’s same pace and energy.
The second time around there are a few glitches. First there are the action sequences, which sometimes go beyond goofy to extreme. Both Jones and aging Agent Z (Rip Torn) are seen doing backflips and kicks by their stuntmen, but more important is how these fights are not as seamlessly integrated as they are in the original film. Next there’s the innocent woman drawn into the fray between man and monster. “MiB” features Linda Fiorentino as a cynical, dryly funny mortician, with hints of necrophilia, while “MiBII” settles for Rosario Dawson as a nice, uninteresting waitress. There’s also the villain: Lara Flynn Boyle replaces “MiB’s” D’Onofrio as the hideous alien slimebag in disguise. Instead of of D’Onofrio’s overtly wacky voices, crazy walks, and proclivity to drool, Boyle’s basic gag is that she’s a giant worm but looks like an underwear model. I preferred the funny walks.
So I really should give “Men in Black II” a negative or undecided rating for being lazy, for being the same movie again without any noticeable improvements. But I would be hiding my true reaction, which is—clunky as the movie sometimes is, and even as some of its jokes fell flat—“MiBII” has more than its share of completely unexpected, unapologetic belly laughs arising from how our two heroes react to their absurd situations. I wish I could copy down a gag or two as examples, but on paper they simply aren’t funny. You’ll have to trust me that it’s in their delivery that hilarity lies. All of these jokes come from the ease with which Smith and Jones inhabit their roles, and the give-and-take of their scenes together. Like in the original film, director Sonnenfeld knows that the special effects and the aliens are a sideshow: we want to see Jones’ stoneface and deadpan understatement, and Smith’s wisecracks and everyman consternation. Their charisma and Sonnenfeld’s comic timing carry the day.
I’ve liked Will Smith more with each of his successive roles and feel he deserved his Oscar nomination for “Ali.” In “MiB” and even more in “MiBII” he shows an effortlessness with comic timing and self-deprecation that his juvenile and almost forgotten stints on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” could not have predicted. The single best joke in “Men in Black II” is very fast, and involves his one-word response to the threat of an alien thug. It’s stupid and childish and obvious, but at the same time so out of the blue that I laughed until I hurt. “Men in Black II” is what it is: a fun ninety minutes at the movies. If there’s to be a “Men in Black III,” it had better break the routine. But we’ll let them get away with it this one time.
Finished July 6, 2002
Copyright 2002 Friday & Saturday Night