If you loved or even remotely enjoyed MIB, you should AVOID this movie

Rating: Null/10 (10 April 2004)

I will be the first to admit that I really liked MIB. It was fun, it was weird, it was cool, it was punchy.
I'd started to become so wary of the abject crap that Hollywood was putting out these days, that I'd fallen into the habit of NOT obeying my long tradition of going on opening weekend... waiting for a few reviews to come in from The Man On The Street, and then making my decision about whether or not to spend my hard-earned cash on a movie, or just download it instead, just to satisfy my curiousity. (sometimes the ad campaign hints that the movie will suck, and sometimes the ads can be very compelling for a movie that winds up being very mediocre)
Thing is, certain movies seem like such a no-brainer that I throw caution to the wind and go on opening-weekend, just for old time's sake. When I first saw MIB2 advertised, I thought about how much I giggled and smiled during the first one, that I thought sure, I won't download this, it's GOT to be good, I'll cheerfully fork over the cash and go see it opening weekend.
Very rarely am I THIS wrong about a movie. The entire plot was a rehash of the first movie, without any of the wit, charm, pacing, or gee-whiz of discovery.
I actually find myself enjoying the original Men In Black, in retrospect, LESS than I did before seeing MIB2. I don't know how to describe it... it's not that the plot of MIB2 breaks continuity with MIB or anything technical like that. It's just, somehow, I didn't feel cheated after seeing MIB, but after seeing MIB2, I feel not only cheated by it, but also by MIB.
Lara Flynn Boyle was supposed to be sexy and/or funny, and she was neither. The gags were supposed to be funny, and they weren't. The action wasn't interesting. The gadgets weren't cool. The CG was cheap and fake-looking and bad. It wasn't even that the whole story played like a feature length Mercedes-Benz commercial, it was that people I normally like in movies were just bad. I never hate Will Smith in anything, he usually nails it. Not here. The only person who wasn't awful was Tommy Lee Jones, but that's probably just because the role called for a very flat performance, making a "good" performance somewhat indistinguishable from a bad one.
Even if you're curious, take my advice and save your money at the rental shop and/or your bandwidth on the P2P systems, and keep your happy memories of the first movie.
I wish I could "un-see" MIB2.
(end of primary review, specific details of the movie follow, stop reading here if you don't want to be spoiled)
SPOILER-SPACE .......... SPOILER-SPACE .......... SPOILER-SPACE ..........
Certain details were handled badly. This movie could have been great as a turn-the-tables style rehash of MIB, only now it's young hotshot MIB Will Smith who must show new recruit Tommy Lee Jones "the ropes"... only his style of indoctrination is comically different from how it was handled in the first movie. Instead, we get "the Re-Neuralizer"... a big white room that undoes whatever magic the De-neuralizer does.
Also, and perhaps this was a nod to the comic book, I never read it, but showing us another closing shot of the "worlds within worlds" idea seemed unnecessary, but maybe the comic always ended that way. It seemed less gimmickey in the first movie. It was actually kinda cute. In MIB2 it just came off as tired.
The family room scene with a cameo by Sonnenfeld was gratuitous and broke the pathetic excuse for comic pacing that this movie had. Speaking of Cameos, I really didn't need to see Whacko Jacko in this... the idea that Michael Jackson is really an alien is a cute and potentially funny joke, but he was just on screen for waaaay too long, and it just didn't 'hit'. It came off as indulgent and was actually painful to watch.
There was exactly one joke in this movie that actually worked, and it was A) a mildly racist cliché and B) in the commercial. The line about how the inflatable driver of the spiffy Mercedes-Benz used to be black, but he always got pulled over. Every other joke either fell flat or made me wince.
And I know I'm kinda weird in that, even though her acting is often less-than-stellar, I kinda like Linda Fiorentino. For some reason, I enjoy her in every movie I see her in, even if she's kinda bad. Maybe I just want to bone her, I don't know. Short version, she's not in this movie at all, with maybe one cryptic line of explanation as to why. I thought she was kinda fun as the one person who would actually make a decent sidekick for Will Smith's character, and ultimately winds up as his partner in the end of MIB. There was something about that which 'hit' for me. But alas, no Linda. Instead we get Lara as the Big Bad, who I really, really wanted to like in this, and find her all Deliciously Evil and gigglesome. She was just boring, unsexy and unfunny. In the minor gripe category, this movie killed my disinterested quasi- crush on Lara. It's just gone now. Poof. Not a huge loss, admittedly, but certainly an E Misdemeanor to add to this movie's huge list of crimes against the MIB franchise.
The pacing sucked, the comedy wasn't, and the plot bored. To reiterate the non-spoiler portion, save your happy memories of MIB by NOT seeing this movie.