At Best, it's Just a Lame Sequel to an Awesome Summer Movie

Rating: 4/10 (25 June 2013)

MEN IN BLACK II is more than a major disappointment. It's a source of never-ending resentment from me. I loved the first film. The studio had no excuse not to bust out with a proper sequel that built upon the awesomeness started in the first movie and expand the universe further. MEN IN BLACK II came out a full five years after the first movie; it was plenty of time to develop a script that would do the franchise justice and keep the audience excited for further adventures with the MiB. But they didn't. MEN IN BLACK II is a blatant cash-grab and would go on to kill the franchise until it was dug out from it's grave for a third film in 2012. As you might remember, the first film ended with Agent K retiring from the agency to return to his normal life with Agent J starting his new life with the MiB. Within a few years, J has risen to become the most respected, hard-working agent with the organization and he has a reputation for growing tired of his partners, neuralyzing them, and sending them home to their normal lives. When a intergalactic threat returns to Earth after decades to continue a search for a powerful.somethingcalled the Light of Zartha, Zed directs J to the only agent with knowledge of the Light and the evil alien that continues to hunt it down: K or, as he's now known, Kevin Brown. J must re-recruit the organization's best agent and return his memories if he hopes to stop the alien threat beforeI'm not sure really. It's never made all that clear.
Right, so from the very start we hit a major problem with MEN IN BLACK II: a lazy script. Or maybe the script wasn't lazy and the filmmakers dropped the ball. Regardless whose fault, we never quite know what exactly is going on in this movie. What exactly is the Light of Zartha? Why is it so important? What will Serleena, the movie's lame villain, do with it and how will it help her do whatever it is she wants to do? What danger does the Light of Zartha present to Earth and why? We never get any solid answers to any of this, just vague threats for which we're supposed to fear consequences that we never really learn. With the first movie, it was cut and dry: Edgar the interstellar cockroach wanted to steal the galaxy on Orion's belt for his own evil purposes and Earth was threatened when the galaxy's true owners arrive and demand we hand it over before they blow up the planet. There's no sense of tension if there's no determinable threat. This is exactly why I had completely lost interest in the movie before it even reached the final act.
Upon watching MEN IN BLACK II, it was easy to see the thought processes going through the minds of director Barry Sonnenfeld and writers Robert Gordon and Barry Fanaro. The first movie was a hit so why not extract the more memorable elements from it and cram it down the audience's throat for 90 minutes. How else can you explain Frank the Pug's over the entire movie? He was a funny little scene in the first movie and now he's joined the MiB, partnered up with Agent J, and singing Ba-Ha Men becausewait for ithe's a dog. Get it?! On that same note, the "worm guys" who were good for a laugh when introducing Agent J to aliens on Earth in the first movie are now back with quadruple the screen time. You see the problem? A lot of MEN IN BLACK II is just a rehashing of the some of the best moments of the original. The whole recruitment angle, while a little fresher with the tables turned and J reintroducing the world of the MiB to K, is just a throwback to the first film. Jack Jeebs, Tony Shalhoub's shady intergalactic arms dealer, returns for some more gags andyou guessed itmore screen time. It's all just more of the same with a more confusing plot.
Now that the most aggravating parts of the movie are out of the way, I wish someone could explain to me that a sequel that was released five years after the originala sequel that was released the same year as SPIDER-MAN with its amazing visualshas effects on par with the cheesiest cable sci-fi movie. One of the coolest aspects of the first MEN IN BLACK was the perfect mix of practical creature effects and CG. The second installment amps up the CG effects without worrying about how bad they look. There's a scene in the beginning of the movie with Agent J confronting a giant alien worm in the subway tunnels. At some point he is holding on to the worm's back for dear life while careening down the tunnel, and it looks horrible. It was some blatant blue/green screen work that didn't come close to working. Serleena was even worse. In her "human" form, she's a hot Lara Flynn Boyle. In her alien form, she's a mess of vines or tentacles or something and it just doesn't work. Same with Johnny Knoxville's second head. Knoxville is already a weak presence in the movie as Serleena's henchman but a horribly unconvincing second head compounds the lameness.
The rest of the movie is just the filmmakers doing their best to appeal to the lowest common denominator: an alien with a scrotum on his chin called, unsurprisingly, a Ballchinian, a toilet gag with Agents J and K being "flushed" out of MiB HQ, and both K and Zed getting moments to shine with crappy wirework and groan-inducing kung-fu. As a movie, MEN IN BLACK II is just lame. As a sequel to one of my beloved summer blockbusters, MEN IN BLACK II is nearly an insult.