Lighter "Black"

Rating: Null/10 (11 July 2002)

The Men in Black may be back, but they're not in top form. Here is a film that proves really good movies are more than the sum of their parts. Most of the reasons to see the original MiB are here--and there's still something missing, leaving the sequel to feel pale by comparison.
The original, you will recall, ended with Agent Kay (Tommy Lee Jones) erasing his memory and returning to the girl he left behind when he joined the boys in black so many years ago, while Agent Jay (Wil Smith) carried on with the Linda Fiorentino character as a partner. Years later, both Kay's girl and Jay's partner are out of the picture (both incidents are permitted only the briefest of expositions), and Earth faces a new threat from Serleena, an alien that looks like a piece of cooked asparagus in her most basic form but who usually takes on the appearance of Lara Flynn Boyle.
Serleena means business--during the opening credit sequence she wastes more planets than the Galactic Empire managed in an entire trilogy. She's looking for a MacGuffin called the Light of Zartha--and since Kay supposedly knows where it is, Jay has to go re-recruit him from his life as a mild-mannered postal worker.
As in the first film, there's good chemistry between Smith and Jones, who trade one-liners with relaxed flair. Some bit players from the first film--a talking pug and some fast-living worm-like creatures--make a good showing in supporting roles. And again, many laughs are provided by the extra-terrestrial explinations for a lot of Earth's oddities: my favorite involves Jay and a hefty alien communicating by means of spit rap.
Perhaps what MiBII misses most is a sense of urgency--the notion that the characters regard their situation to be of utmost importance. We're told that if the Light of Zartha isn't off the planet by a certain time, it will destroy the Earth, but the threat never seems to hold any weight for the characters. They're detatched, and as a result so are we. Likewise, Jay is given a love interest in the persona of Rosario Dawn (some listings give the character's name as Rita, but I'm sure I heard her spoken of as Laura in the film), but the two never really strike sparks.
The original "Men in Black" had an edge to it, a sly tongue-in-cheek attitude and an occasionally creepy aura that the sequel never manages. Instead of the black comedy one might expect, we end up getting comedy with cream and sugar--not entirely unsastisfying, but not what we wanted either.