The stuff that makes brain fat, pale and unhealthy

Rating: 1/10 (28 July 2002)

It is imperative to state the damage that corporate films like MiB 2 are doing to the value of the American movie. Remember when product placement used to be slightly subtle? Remember when even horrible sequels were trying to be original? (Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls is the Godfather pt. II compared to Goldmember and Men in Black 2!) Those days are gone. Buried. More and more frequently films are turning out to be manipulative commercials where characters are liscened out to hold products and recite lines like the scientist in Independence Day, smashed against the observation glass of Area 51 with a hypersensitive tentacle wrapped firmly around his throat. Plots are recycled, characters change or are completley done away with, and performances are only there to introduce the next sight gag.
Thus is the case with Men in Black 2. Are you really suprised? Did you really expect it to be a good movie? In corporate bedfellow Barry Sonnenfeld's bleak, muddled and watered down remake of first film we are invited to laugh because the other idiots in the theatre are forcing themselves to. It's sad, how much forced laughter can be heard in the theaters these days. Exclamations rather than true displays of emotion, the forced choked laugh is becoming as commonplace as popcorn and projection at Cineplex.
In Men in Black 2, the entire production is shoddy and cheap. It dosen't feel like a movie. It feels weak, it feels greedy, it feels insencire and rude. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones don't care if the movie is good or not, they can get off on the fact that the first film was something we had never seen before. At first I thought maybe the story had to be rushed but I am starting to understand that scripts like this one aren't rushed, there is simply no effort put into writing them. The storyline is the vehicle for Will Smith and an increasing number of strange, distant, unfunny sight gags that perplex and disturb rather than bring on belly laughs. Everything about the film sucks, and it sucks so bad that it makes me wonder if there is any saving cinema. All we see is sequels. All we are treated to is unsubtle and desperate product placement and all we can expect is more of the same unless we STOP SEEING THESE MOVIES. IF THESE FILMS MAKE MILLIONS, THEY WILL KEEP MAKING THEM! I implore moviegoers, don't bother with this film. It's a remake of the first movie, it offers nothing original and it is cheap, jumbled and nonscensical just like Austin Powers: Goldmember. I can almost guarantee that Road to Perdition, a film so far from a comedy it hasn't even learned the word, will make you laugh harder than Men in Black 2 will.
Do not waste your money on this garbage.