Review: Men in Black II
So here we are five days after the release of Men in Black II and I’m just finally getting out of the house to see it. Why did it take me so long to get off my lazy ass an off to the theatre? Because I’m beginning to hate going to the movies on opening day and getting trampled by people who just got off of the “net” and read some “reviews” and can tell me every plot point before it finally happens. See I don’t need someone to tell me because those of us with brains bigger than a dog’s left-nut can figure out movies for ourselves. Anyway, I’m becoming skewed…
Men in Black II is the latest and supposedly greatest in the line of summer movies, I even predicted it would be the biggest movie of the summer, but who really expected Spider-Man to destroy records like it did, I sure didn’t. The movie stars Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith as agents of the top secret organization that polices alien activity on the planet earth. When seeing the first movie five years ago you wondered how they would get Agent K back into the line-up and in the movie, and how they would get agent L to drop out (which was done very stupidly by the way).
Anyway when a mysterious light is hidden on earth and the universe’s biggest bad-ass-lingerie-model comes looking for it, things get heated and the only man who knows how to stop it had his memory erased five years earlier. After bringing K back, the movie really picks up because of the on-screen duo between Smith and Jones.
What directory Barry Sonnenfeld seemed like he was doing for the the sequel was take the best parts of the first movie and give them bigger parts in the second. The highlight of the movie is Frank the Pug, who is giving a much elongated part in this sequel compared to his two minutes of screen time in the first. But, unfortunately, along with some of the better characters that are broadened, some of the same old jokes are returned and reversed to either A) try them again or B) see if anyone remembers. For the most part they clicked, but some, most the regurgitated stuff from before, didn’t work out so well and seemed to fall flat.
I was a bit concerned when I saw the initial trailer for the movie because it lacked the outstanding humor of the first, but I’m safe in saying that, while not as funny as the first, Men in Black II is a very funny movie and is the perfect mix between action and comedy.
My only complaint? The movie is over way to quickly. We got through five trailers, the movie, and half of the credits in under two hours which is far too short for a movie competing this summer for attention with so many dynamic movies, and those who already downloaded them from net (but that is another story). While I may have been very presumptuous when I stated this would be the biggest movie of the summer, it did break some records for a July 4th opening, and just may very well stay around to make a whole lot of money, but in the end it still can’t compare to the original, and not many things do.