Cosmic rhymes with comic

Rating: 7/10 (23 May 2007)

The less that we could say is that movies about extra-terrestrials are becoming more and more fashionable. It's certainly the most fertile period for alien movies since the '50s. At the time, these flicks were some kind of Cold War metaphors that promoted anti-communism and McCarthyism and were disguised as tales depicting an invasion from outer-space. Today, it's mainly a very valuable excuse for developing special effects and ultra-sophisticated animatronic creatures. Only, in the case that's picking our interest right now, there's something different.
It must be specified beforehand that there are different kinds of alien movies. The first kind is the invasion film which dominated the silver screen in the middle of the twentieth century and which seems gaining in popularity since recent box-office successes like "Independence Day". The second kind is the benign alien movie a la "E.T." where space invaders are kindly and inoffensive and where humans look like a primitive form of life in the universe.
"Men in Black" belongs to a third type that we don't see much often. We could call it the alien comedy. It's a film genre that is not much approached and which releases even fewer great successes on the box-office side as well as on the critical side. There has been "Mars Attacks!", but critics didn't hook to that kind of iconoclast humor from Tim Burton. But with "MiB", they will get hooked for sure.
"Men in Black" stars the endlessly serious Tommy Lee Jones and the rising star Will Smith. Jones plays the role of K, a MiB agent, that is an organization which monitors extra-terrestrial activities on Earth. K hires Smith (re-named J) after he successfully pursued an alien in the streets of New York City.
Their first mission together consists in recovering a galaxy (because it seems that the size doesn't have any importance) on 'Orion's Belt'. Their adversary is a 'bug disguised' as Edgar (Vincent D'Onofrio) who is also searching for the galaxy. With the passing of the events lived by the two agents, we gradually discover the Men in Black world, their weapons, the different species of extra-terrestrials who live on Earth and what their job implies (and it's not included in any job guide...).
It is hard to define what is the 'meat' of the movie. It could be the duo formed by the two principal actors, the futuristic gadgets which will make salivate those who have an eye on advanced technologies or it could also be the aliens, who are CG, played by actors with special costumes or remote-controlled. In fact, there's a little bit of all this. But I'd say that the most interesting moments are those which make the audience laugh wildly.
In that case, it's Will Smith who's the best. In a performance that seems to be an evolution from his hot-shot role in "Independence Day", Smith is incredibly funny and wacky and he always provides good laughs, should it be for moments of physical comedy or when he makes the use of jokes and irony.
And what could be better to complete a jester role than combining it with its total opposite? This fact makes that the movie enters in the category of 'odd couple' films. We must admit it, Jones plays his role with professionalism and his serious and his calm of stone give him a particular look in the tongue-in-cheek style. The sequence of the car in the tunnel with Elvis Presley's "Promised Land" playing in the background is the best example. In fact, the only moment where he laughs, it's when he tells a joke that is so appalling that the viewer could only laugh of him and not of his joke.
I also fairly loved the famous segment where K and J's boss, Zed (Rip Torn), displays pictures of real-life people who are supposed to be aliens themselves. In the lot, I've spotted Steven Spielberg (I've always told myself that he had to be from another planet), Danny DeVito (who redefines the 'little green man' term) and Sylvester Stallone (who apparently had difficulties to get rid of his extra-terrestrial accent). And at the end of the movie, we also learn that Dennis Rodman would be an alien too, which wouldn't be too surprising for obvious reasons...
I've been somehow muddled by Vincent D'Onofrio's performance. Was he really there during the entire movie moving in such a mechanical way? Or was he played by a giant-sized animated puppet by moments? Anyway, in both cases, we can only raise our hat.
I wouldn't say the same thing for principal actress Linda Fiorentino who looked very annoying. The end of the movie is also ambiguous.
Special effects are mentionable. Aliens, even if they are totally peculiar, are well-conceived, should it be with the help of computers or from Rick Baker's hand. It must be said that the fact that the story is an adaptation of a rather unknown comic series (which also proves that comics' adaptations do not always involve superheroes), there must be a special treatment that should be brought to the presentation because comics images are rather stylized. The final result is more than satisfying.
In a genre not much approached like the sci-fi comedy genre, "Men in Black" is probably the greatest representative of it since "Ghostbusters" in 1984. It's a very funny thrill ride that you would want to see again and again...