Flimsy plot with nothing new.

Rating: 5/10 (23 July 2002)

Of course, spoilers will show their ugly faces.
Between the two big sequels that came out recently (Attack of the Clones and Men in Black II), I really can't say which one I am more disappointed in.
Men in Black was a great movie. Everything was lush and exciting--all new, all surprising. Men in Black II has nothing new, nothing surprising. When Jeebs got his head blown off and regrown in the first one, I was shocked. It happens again--and again--in the sequel, but nobody in the theaters were horrified. Nobody was even amazed at a giant worm living in a subway system. The worm, by the way, is about the only new thing.
Sure, it's great seeing J "retrain" K. That's really funny. But it hardly takes the space it needs in the movie, when the previews made me believe that was what it would mostly be about.
Stupid plot. Just plain dumb. A "sexy" (I apply the term loosely) female is bent on stealing the "light" (which is never explained why or what the "light" even is) from Earth, where it isn't supposed to be because K hid it after the Zarthans (yeah, really crummy '70's sci-fi flick kind of name) brought it to keep it away from the evil queen. K neuralyzed himself to rid his mind of the memory, which eventually leads to a huge plot hole.
If he neuralyzed himself that long ago, the deneuralyzer should have worked, bringing out that info so he would not have to use his own clues.
My betta fish could have written a better screenplay than this. Some one-liners make it funny, but the whole plot is too superficial, cheesy, and thrown together. I felt like it was a mismatched jigsaw puzzle with pieces from four or five different puzzles thrown in and crookedly arranged.
I was very annoyed by the movie. It's not that it was slow, it was just too perfect in places and utterly stupid in others. A perfect example of both of these together is that the female that J falls in love with is actually the "light" (or so I presume, since that part is so foggy), the daughter of K's beloved Queen of Zartha, and the princess of Zartha. Not only that, but the evil queen is in the pizzeria with her and doesn't even realize that's what she's looking for.
Not to mention that the evil queen is defeated WAY too easily. Come on, the bug in the first one took a lot of effort. This antagonist only needed to be lured by the new flying car (with a really cool control mechanism, I must add) into the giant worm's mouth. Not too tough.
Like I said, everything was new with the first. This time everything is repeated and I felt like I was just watching the first one with a fairy tale atmosphere around it. I was thoroughly disgusted and hope that if MIB III comes out, it will resemble the other two but still be unique in its own right.