Avoid at all costs!

Rating: 1/10 (8 February 2003)

Before I get started on MIB2 let me just say that I liked the first Men in Black movie (***/****) because it was fun and Smith and Jones had good chemistry together. Men in Black 2 is a perfect example of Hollywood's greed. A movie made not to tell a worthwhile story or at least an entertaining one but for the sole reason of putting money in the pockets of everyone involved.
I was annoyed enough after being bombarded with so many commercials (ads for the movie, ads for the soundtrack, cross promotional ads with Burger King, Sprint and even Head and Shoulders!) that seemed to play during every commercial break around the time that the movie was released but when I actually got off my lazy butt and saw the movie I was downright p***ed off. I would have been ok with the mass advertising if the movie actually delivered on what it promised but it didn't even come close.

The story for MIB2 is tremendously stupid and pointless, it's a balls-less stale rehash of the first movie. The argument from the defender's of this junk is that it's not about the story but it is about entertaining us and making us laugh, the thing is the movie does neither unless you consider a
singing dog to be funny which I certainly don't. The action scenes (if you want to call them that) are so dull and been there done that that I found myself begging for them to just be over so I didn't have to suffer anymore.

Others flaws included a major character played by Johnny Knoxville pretty much disappears without any explanation of what happened to him and a character who was killed in the first while working at a morgue (played by David Cross) is back without any explanation as a guy who owns a video store (which are both just careless filmmaking which is quite sad considering that this was made by the man who gave us Get Shorty). Oh and let's not forget the blatant product placements in the movie, they actually had a Sprint and a Burger King inside their MIB headquarters! I wonder how a secret agency could remain so secret while acquiring such franchises.

The short list of plusses in this movie are even though they seem to have mailed in their performances in this one the chemistry between Smith and Jones was still there and there was a locker bit that was kind of funny.

It comes as no suprise to me that this movie had the big first weekend but then dropped and dropped and ended up grossing 50 million less than the original despite all the ads, never underestimate the power of word of mouth. Men in Black 2 is a giant piece of s*** that never should have been made.
My Rating: 1/2*/****