Quality beginning to an entertaining franchise

Rating: 6/10 (7 March 2015)

"Men in Black" from soon 20 years ago is still one of the most famous science fiction comedies out there, a combination not too common actually. It stars Will Smith (who also recorded the famous title song) and Tommy Lee Jones. But the highlight for me was probably Vincent D'Onofrio playing a huge bug. Total scene stealer and I'm also a great fan of him in "Criminal Intent" and everywhere else. The script was okay all in all, but I have to say I did not find Smith particularly funny. Tommy Lee Jones was not supposed to be funny, apart from very few very subtle scenes. He is a great actor, but it's difficult to appreciate such a serious character in a film which really has no dramatic ambition and only comedic purpose. Somehow the whole background story (past battles, deleting memories, aliens living among us, Smith's recruitment challenge...) and world they created was more interesting than the actual plot of trying to catch and kill D'Onofrio's character.
The movie runs for 90 minutes and so far there have been already 2 sequels. These weren't rushed though. There was a break of five years to movie number 2 and even 10 years to movie number 3. I wonder if the fourth will come out in 20 years time. Just kidding. It's already planned, so it will certainly not be that long, probably 5 years max. We will see if director Barry Sonnenfeld returns just like he did for the two sequels. He also worked with Smith in "Wild, Wild West". However, there were also some plot weaknesses in this film here. Why would they recruit a complete newbie in the profession to save the world with TLJ's character. They must have a more experienced guy for that, right? Or maybe did the monsters attack because the former partner retired and they wanted to make use of the occasion? And why would TLJ's character also retire at the end of the film. Maybe too much responsibility for Smith's character still in my opinion. Why is everybody retiring? Okay, the first guy was pretty old, but TLJ not really. Unfortunately, I was not too big on Linda Fiorentino's character. Her inclusion really only seemed with the purpose to have at least one female character in the movie, but I did not feel she contributed much to the story. Anyway, Will Smith reminded me of a young Eddie Murphy in this film, although that is almost a bit of an unfair comparison as Smith is not much younger actually, but just seems very juvenile for his age.
This comic-based movie was made right after the end of Fresh Prince and propelled Smith into stardom on the big screen also. It won the Best Makeup award (Rick Baker, the legend) at the Oscars that year (a lot of it thanks to D'Onofrio's bug I'm sure) and scored two more nominations. Actually, I would not have minded a screenplay nomination for Ed Solomon either. Especially the dialogs were really well-written. All in all, I recommend this film although pretty much everybody probably has seen it by now. It's an interesting comedy and even with the scary setting of losing the Earth to monsters and some killings happening (not graphically), it is all very light and should really harm nobody except very small children. It came out in the year when "Titanic" sunk everything else at the award ceremonies and box office. But I still believe "Men in Black" is the better film even if it only came in second at the box office and did not even reach half of "Titanic"'s money. Watch it.