Why this movie didn't work

Rating: 4/10 (21 January 2009)

MIB2 suffered from several problems that Ghostbusters II suffered from.
The first is, that by the second go-around, you have already accepted the premise. There are ghosts, and these lovable losers catch them. There are aliens amongst us, and these guys police them. Once you've accepted the premise, it just isn't as funny. It just doesn't seem as fantastical, and therefore, not as farcical.
Another problem, both movie franchises had an animated cartoon in between movies. (The Ghostbusters cartoon was actually quite successful and ran for a season after the second movie, even though the second movie and cartoon had irreconcilable time lines.) In GBII, that meant that the ghost "Slimer" became a more featured character because he was such a popular character in the cartoon series (even though his presence made little or no sense in the context of the second movie.) They were appealing to the kiddie audience.
The second MIB movie had the same problem. The Worms, Frank the Pug and Junkman Jeebs were all minor characters in the first film, but were popular in the cartoon series. So all got major roles in the sequel. Probably Wil Smith contributed to this, since he tried to make the sequel more "kid friendly" than the first. That meant the comedy wasn't nearly as biting.
Still, you have to like this film. Wil Smith is charming and Tommy Lee Jones is bitingly ironic. Rosario Dawson is sexy. You want to like this film, it's just hard with the material.