Barry! What's got into you! This is pants!

Rating: Null/10 (5 August 2002)

As sequels go, this has got to rate as one of the worst I've seen in a very long time. It's not just pants, it's a huge pair of grey Y-fronts. If I had paid 12 quid to go and see MIB 4, starring two complete unknowns and directed by someone other than Barry Sonnenfeld, I would've deserved what I got. I didn't expect MIB 2, with virtually the same team as last time, to be such a weak, un-funny and pointless waste of time. It has virtually nothing going for it. Tommy Lee Jones doesn't turn up until about 20 minutes in, and seems totally bored with the entire escapade. Will Smith's jokes are all as lame as hell. The "special effects" are appalling - quite shockingly bad, in fact, and poor old Lara Flynn Boyle, after years of trying to get back into mainstream cinema, has just made one of the biggest cock-ups of her career in accepting a role as a....well, I have no idea what she was meant to be. The movie itself lasts only about an hour and a quarter, but that's an hour and ten minutes too long in my book. If ever there was a film that is virtually no more than the sum of its trailer, this is it. All the funny lines had obviously been heard already (the audience didn't laugh at any of the jokes and this was a packed Odeon Leicester Square on a Saturday night), and we all staggered out into the night, ashamed at having paid the price of the MIB DVD (on sale at HMV round the corner) for such a pile of rubbish. Terrible.