Men in Black II (2002)

Every time you watch a summer blockbuster that's met with massive financial success, chances are that it'll get a sequel sometime down the road. It might not be right away, but the sequel will come eventually. Such was the case for Men in Black II, a sequel that was released five years after its hugely successful progenitor. The original Men in Black was a fun, entertaining, enjoyable movie despite a few minor flaws here and there, but its sequel is nothing but a disappointing mess. Even though practically the entire cast and crew of the first movie returned for this second go-round, Men in Black II is nothing more than a failed attempt to catch lightning in a bottle a second time. If you haven't seen the movie, I'll explain why I feel that way.

In the five years that have passed since the events of the first movie, Agent J (Will Smith) has become the Men in Black's resident hotshot. He also operates largely by himself, none of his long string of partners lasting longer than a few weeks due to J's ultra-high professional standards. While investigating the murder of an alien at a pizzeria, J discovers that the killer is Serleena (Lara Flynn Boyle), an intergalactic tyrant who has arrived on Earth searching for a powerful object called "the Light of Zartha." Believing that they're in possession of the Light, Serleena breaks into MIB headquarters and instigates a full-scale lockdown.

The only living MIB operative past or present with any knowledge of the Light of Zartha is K (Tommy Lee Jones). Unfortunately, he's retired from the Men in Black and has returned to civilian life as Kevin Brown, the postmaster of a small town in Massachusetts. And as a side effect of retirement, he's been "neuralyzed" and thus retains no memory of his time with the MIB agency. J convinces Kevin that aliens are real and that he was once a Man in Black, and succeeds in "de-neuralyzing" him and restoring him to the K of old. But when K realizes that he'd hidden the truth about the Light of Zartha from even himself, he and J must follow a path of clues that somehow lead them to Laura Vasquez (Rosario Dawson), a waitress at the pizzeria Serleena attacked.

Even ten years after the fact, I'm still surprised by just how big a disappointment Men in Black II turned out to be. The first movie wasn't perfect, but for everything it got right, its sequel got wrong. Men in Black II is so frustratingly inadequate that I'm actually having a hard time coming up with words to describe just how much the movie misses the mark. But let's soldier on and try to define just where Men in Black II went wrong.

Barry Sonnenfeld is once again at the helm for the sequel, his first directorial effort following the epic disaster that was his 1999 movie Wild Wild West. Sonnenfeld must have been in a serious funk after Wild Wild West's resoundingly negative reception, because it feels like he wasn't even bothering to try with Men in Black II. His direction really just felt like more of the same stuff he did with the first movie. There's very little in the way of innovation, making me think that Sonnenfeld figured if it worked in 1997, it'd work just as well in 2002. But it didn't, Mr. Sonnenfeld. It did not.

It's one of those cases where everything Sonnenfeld got right the first time, he only reaches "mildly acceptable" proportions this time around. And the things that went wrong in the first movie go even worse. I'm specifically referring to the CGI, which is ugly beyond words. The practical effects look nice, but the CGI is so awful that it makes the movie hard to look at. It not only looks incredibly fake, but its failure to blend in with the stuff that's really there makes it worse. If I wanted to see an hour and a half of people interacting with animated things that aren't really there, I'd watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit again.

The writing isn't much better either. Scripted by Robert Gordon and Barry Fanaro, the movie is jam-packed with jokes that just plain suck. The only humor drawn from a good portion of the movie is due to how awkward some of the setups are. Some of the jokes are indeed funny, but the fact that Gordon and Fanaro actually try playing some of the stupider jokes straight and expect us to think they're not lame is more sad than anything else.

The worst part of the whole thing is that a lot of the cast is just kinda there. There are a few good performances, but for the most part, the cast is mediocre at best. Will Smith, for example, is hit or miss. There's time where he's really funny and entertaining, but there's other times when you want him to just shut the hell up for two seconds. On the other hand, Tommy Lee Jones is fantastic as always. He's a lot of fun in the role, and I honestly thought he was the strongest part of the whole movie.

Like Smith, the supporting cast is hit or miss as well. Tim Blaney is funny as Frank the talking dog, while Rosario Dawson does her best despite her poorly written character. Our villains du jour, however, are less than impressive. Lara Flynn Boyle doesn't make for a very intimidating villain, no matter how hard she may be trying, and her whole performance is average at best. But at least she does a better job than Johnny Knoxville, who plays Serleena's two-headed sidekick. Knoxville is annoying as hell here, to the point that it made me want to go watch clips from Jackass just to see him get beat up.

That pretty much sums up how I feel about Men in Black II: I'd rather watch something else instead. It's not an overwhelmingly terrible movie like others I've seen, but it's still pretty bad. Considering how well the first Men in Black turned out, the sequel being such a letdown makes it even worse. I remember when I saw the movie theatrically, my first thought was, "That was the best they could do?!" And revisiting it ten years later, I'm still thinking the same thing. There was so much promise here, but the movie shot itself in the foot and in the process killed the franchise for a full decade. And thus, I can't give Men in Black II anything higher than two stars. At least the third movie turned out to be watchable, because I simply couldn't handle two crappy Men in Black sequels.

Final Rating: **