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Alienation
>> Men in Black II is another pointless summer sequel
by MARK SLUTSKY The first Men in Black movie was a semi-decent stab at summer entertainment. It wasn’t much of a movie, but had a slightly novel concept and some amusing things to look at. It also seemed designed to be a franchise from the start, and now, exactly five years and a day later, director Barry Sonnenfeld and stars Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones (though not, curiously, Linda Fiorentino) have finally teamed up for the inevitable sequel. Like the prequel, it isn’t much of a movie either. I’m not exactly sure what Men in Black II is. Or, to be honest, what it’s about, or more to the point, what exactly is supposed to be happening onscreen for the 90 minutes or so it runs. No one was expecting great leaps in storytelling form here, but the seeming apathy of Sonnenfeld and the stars borders on insulting. The movie starts about as weakly as cinematically possible, with a lame fake TV show about aliens where we’re supposed to learn the basic back-story behind the exciting events to come. It’s something about an alien princess, and this other bad alien, and this magical light--or something like that. It doesn’t make any sense at all. Then we meet up with Will Smith again, doing his crazy Man in Black shtick, chasing some giant worm through the subways for a reason that’s never really explained. Oh yeah, then the bad alien lands and turns into a Victoria’s Secret model played by Lara Flynn Boyle. While I’ll grant that Boyle does look pretty extra-terrestrial, the filmmakers seemed to have spent a lot of time and resources into making her look bosomy. (You’d think they’d have just hired someone a little more buxom, perhaps.) Boyle’s come to Earth to get that magical lamp, or whatever it is they’re talking about in the opening sequence, and so Smith has to get Tommy Lee Jones out of retirement because he knows about the magic thing. Things never even begin to make sense. Since no one really seems to know what’s going on--least of all the audience--Men in Black II plays like the season finale of a complicated long-running TV show you’ve never seen before. There’s no oomph to anything: the action scenes are expensive-looking and lackadaisical, the actors all seem to be confused, and the jokes (like a talking dog getting down to “Who Let the Dogs Out”) are atrocious. Sure,
there’s some neat-looking gadgets here and there. You’ve
got to give it to these poor designers, who clearly spent a lot of time
and effort making nifty super-future-guns. It’s like that last
Star Wars movie, also filled with cool-looking gimcracks but completely
senseless as a motion picture. It seems like the makers of Men in Black
II focused so much on fancy effects and gimmicks that they forgot to
stick a movie in there. : Men in Black II is now playing >> Movie Listings |
