A complete abomination!

Rating: 1/10 (7 July 2002)

While not a masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination, the original "Men in Black" was a lighthearted, entertaining vehicle smoothly carried by the repartee between Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. This debacle, however, bears little resemblance to the 1997 crowdpleaser.
Let me begin by assuring you that liking the first movie by no means guarantees that you will enjoy MIB 2. That was certainly not the case for me. The pacing was terrible, the plot pathetic, and the jokes are set up in a haphazard, rushed manner, giving the impression that the director was handed a script containing too many jokes, and of a poor quality!, and attempted to cram them all into an 82 minute running time. The original was fresh, and the actors seemed to be having fun, but here Tommy Lee Jones looks depressed, not as part of his character, but as if he is aware of the terrible quality of the production and is merely waiting until he can go home for the day. Will Smith tries his best, but laden with an asinine script and poor direction, he cannot help failing. As other users have commented, the plot is nonsensical and painful. I understand that the plot is secondary in films like this, and in fact am a fairly major Jackie Chan fan, so I honestly would not have minded if everything else had fallen into place. What's more, whereas the original film's humor was almost entirely clean, the sequel finds it necessary to riddle the script with tasteless sex jokes. I'm not a prude, and I did not object to the risque "humor" because it was vulgar, but because it was truly boring.
This movie's greatest sin, though, is that it exemplifies all that is wrong with filmmaking today: it is a big budget, overly slick, ultimately cynical and heartless film that plays to the lowest common denominator and laughs all the way to the bank. I'm not knocking populist entertainment, but this piece of filth insults the intelligence and makes one yearn for filmmaking lacking in polish but teeming with heart and wit. Only people willing to pay the admission price to see the trailer for "The Two Towers" (which was infinitely better than MIB 2), have a valid reason to see this dreck. My rating: 1/10.