'Meh' in Black...

Rating: 6/10 (26 June 2017)

I just watched "Princess Mononoke" this weekend. What's that got to do with "Men in Black II"? Nothing, these movies don't play in the same league and shouldn't even be mentioned in the same sentence. But they have one thing in common: they both feature mysterious and fearsome creatures and the enjoyment of these two films is somewhat dependent on how believable they look. "MIIB" might be Sci-fi comedy but the Sci-fi label implies a minimum of suspension of disbelief. It's better to laugh at something that you took seriously in the first place.
Well, "MIIB" is a real step backward when compared to the original 1997 movie but there's never a single moment in the film where nothing didn't look like a CGI abomination, I don't think they even tried to make it believable. Tentacles are recurring physical assets when it comes to the bad aliens; but in the film, they look like what an intern in George Lucas Studios would have produced before being kicked out. Watching the tentacles on that God-boar demon in the opening of "Mononoke" was like admiring a Rembrandt painting in comparison.
But I wouldn't have cared much about the special effects if the film still had 'the' special effect, the 'secret element' that whispers to your mind "who cares? Just enjoy the goddamn thing". Here again, the film never tries to get off the shadow of the 1997 hit, there's not a single part of the story that doesn't rely on what happens in the first, but a good sequel is a movie you can enjoy without seeing the first, one that would work as a great film in its own right.
No chance with this one, to get the references, you need to see the first, if you enjoy the first, you won't love the second, you won't prefer it anyway. So, I'm asking: what's the point of making a sequel if you're not even embracing the possibility that it can be more popular than the first? If improving isn't part of the challenge, why bother? Actually, the plot (or lack of) shows how much determined they were to surpass the original.
The set-up involves another Earth-destruction menace, due to a sort of mysterious star or light a shape-changing Alien must get. The alien takes the form of a Victoria's Secret model and is played by Lara Flynn Boyle, the only gag that could have resulted from her sexiness is used in the start. After that, she's just a sexy villain (not very convincing though) and the two-headed sidekick played by Johnny Knoxville, plays the Vincent d'Onofrio part, but there's no gag that will feel original. The character of Stereo from "Space Goofs" was far more innovative.
How about Kay and Jay, the plot uses a few contrivances that makes the come-back of Jay necessary. Naturally, we learn that there's something called a deneuralyzer and good old Jeebs (Tony Shalhoub) is the one who can provide the service, two birds with the same stone, we'll get the head-splattering gag as an extra. That's what "MIIB" does, as if it followed the lazy section of "Sequel for Dummies", they use the same tricks with a few variations.
Of course, some parts are funny, of course, there's an element of enjoyment in watching good old Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones playing with the big guns again, to see Rip Torn, the worm guys and even Michael Jackson's cameo but the heart isn't in it, and speaking of hart, even the romantic subplot with Rosario Dawson felt forced and dull.
I read that they had to rework the climax because of the World Trade Center attacks, which reminded me of a film that suffered from the same issue: "Die Hard 3" which had to end on a weak and predictable shootout because the original sequence involved a building explosion, and it was after the Oklahoma bombing. At least, the rest of the film was good, that "MIIB" couldn't even have a mind-blowing climax makes the whole experience inferior to the first on every level.
The only gag that works is the locker one, if the rest was half as good, the film would have been a good sequel, but about "MIIB", one could paraphrase the famous quote from the 1997 film and see that its merit is to make the original look good.