An always surprising and amazing action/adventure sci-fi comedy.

Rating: 10/10 (26 May 2013)

One of the best and most original films to come out of Hollywood in the last 20 years. Director Barry Sonnenfeld takes his unashamedly different approaches to film and comedy into the area of the "comic book movie franchise" genre. The wonderful cast is headed up by the always dependable Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith as Agents K and J, respectively. It is an absolutely delightful film, in every sense of the word. The movie combines drama with humor and action, and does it very well. It is the best film I've seen in the area of achieving these moments of fierce action and real-world occurrences, directly followed up by moments of off-the-wall sci-fi adventure and outrageous dialog/characterizations/body language. 'Men in Black' is more or less three parallel stories running simultaneously, all expertly navigated by Sonnenfeld. We have the background story of the Men in Black agency, being told to us by Agent K and Director Zed (Rip Torn). In a nutshell, the agency has been around for a long time now. It is tasked with monitoring alien activity and protecting Earth's citizens from any harm the aliens might have planned. Smith first shows up as NYPD cop James Edwards, who through a very strange (yet hilarious) set of occurrences, is gradually inducted into the agency and learns the ropes, therefore becoming the newest recruit. And we have the not-so-unfortunate story of a douche bag farmer named Edgar, who is killed but his skin is used as a disguise 'Edgar suit' for an evil alien bug. This bug plans to find an item of great importance to him and to other alien races, so that a certain war between two of these races can continue, and his own race can continue to feed off the casualties - literally. Now, while this may seem like a lot of unnecessary explanation leading to a lot of unnecessary exposition in the film, this is simply not so. The story is explained, very quickly, in just a few scenes. Sometimes, we figure out things as the characters do, other times, we are let in on stuff long before the characters ever are. But the film does not ever lose pace because of these elements, nor does it stop so the audience can catch up with all these goings-on. The film purposefully barrels along at a breakneck speed, and the audience is just expected to dive right in and hold on for dear life. Once this is accomplished, the story is really not that hard to understand. However, if one feels that the story disappoints or just doesn't understand it, then the film is always entertaining just as a great popcorn flick. This would also probably be the case for why small children enjoy these films so much - they may not understand the story particulars, but they like the special effects and the comedic moments. This is all assisted by not only the main cast, but also by several great character actors and actresses, such as Tony Shalhoub and Siobhan Fallon. Whichever way you look at it, 'Men in Black' is a ridiculously entertaining ride of action and all kinds of comedy, and I highly recommend it. Which is not something I can say for 'Men in Black II', unfortunately. Since I haven't seen 'Men in Black III' as of yet, I cannot comment on it in the slightest. I'm hoping it's just as good, or better even, than this first installment.