Men In Black II (2002)
Grade: D-
Cast: Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Lara Flynn Boyle, Rosario Dawson, Johnny Knoxville, Tony Shalhoub, Patrick Warburton, and Rip Torn
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Rated PG-13 for language, alien abuse, gore, and action


I'm not going to start this review out like many of the other reviews I have read. I'm not going to say how brilliant the first one was. I'm not going to talk about how fresh it was. How much fun it was. How good it was. Why? Because the bottom line is that I didn't think it was. Sure, it was fun, but I just can't watch it more than once. I've only seen it once. I think that's the way it needs to stay. So, in that regard, I must admit that I really wasn't looking forward to seeing this poorly executed sequel. But I went anyway.

The story revolves around Agent J (Will Smith) who is an agent for a top secret alien fighting group imaginatively called the Men In Black. Their job is to rid the earth of all of the bad aliens. His old partner K (Tommy Lee Jones) was neuralized at the end of the first film, and so Will, er, Agent J goes on a mission to get him to come back. But since K was neuralized, he doesn't remember having anything to do with the Men In Black. But for some reason he decided to go anyway.

But there's a reason that the organization needs him back. An alien named Sirleena (Lara Flynn Boyle) has come to earth to retrieve the "light of Zartha" that will somehow take over the earth, or kill all human life, or something so unimportant like that that the filmmakers didn't feel the need to let us know what it's for. So, anyway, we're introduced to a pizzaria worker named Laura (Rosario Dawson) whose employer is murder by Sirleena because he knows where the light is. Turns out, though, that he doesn't, and that actually the only person who knows is Agent K, because he was in love with the alien that brought it to earth. But whatever...

I'm just going to go ahead and state the obvious: the movie is bad. At only 88 minutes this film should have been a fun-loving romp that moved fast and lightly. But the thing that really bogged the film down was that it left out the first film's creativity. Here, we get a large arsenal of guns, and that's about it. Agent J has a pretty cool car, and a neato remote with one button that seems to control everything in the universe. But that's okay, because this is a fun movie, right?

I just wish films would stop using that excuse in order to be bad. The only reason why anyone was back on this film was the paycheck they would be recieving, and of course, the bukoo box office. But I was content without a sequel. I think most people were. There wasn't any public demand or anything like that, so I'm confused.

But a film as short as this shouldn't be as over-plotted as this. There are some extraneous scenes hanging around that most likely could have been replaced with scenes showcasing the exuberance that some of the first one displayed, but no, instead we get a comic dead zone, a...black hole if you will.

Barry Sonnenfeld's first film this year (the jaw-droppingly hilarious "Big Trouble") was much better, and much funnier than this film. I think that Will Smitch it getting a little too big for his britches. You PLAYED Muhammad Ali, you are not, I repeat NOT, MUHAMMAD ALI! He needs to get over himself and bring his head back down to Earth. If I hear his song "Black Suits Comin' (Nod Ya Head)" one more time I will mame my television/radio horribly. I say this not because of my "personal" dislike of him, but only because it carries over into every single line he speaks in the film.

Jones looks as if he's disgusted with the whole ordeal, and his part is so under-written that he seems like a cameo. Lara Flynn Boyle is more menacing as Asst. District Attorney Helen Gamble on TV's "The Practice," but only because the screenwriters don't make her snarky enough. She certainly looks the part. And then there's Rosario Dawson. True, she was better in "Sidewalks of New York," and true, she is wasted here, but who cares? At least she's in it.

The bottom line here is that the film just doesn't work on any level. It doesn't tell a good story, it doesn't provide much fun, and perhaps most criminally, it won't make you laugh. This is bad filmmaking at it's best.


-Brian Jones, July 2002