Aliens, Smith and Jones (Men In Black 2 - Superbit (DVD))

Member Name: Sullivat

Product:	Men In Black 2 - Superbit (DVD)
Date:	08/07/02 (203 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Funny, Smith & Jones, MIB

Disadvantages: tired script

Men in Black II

Man in Black Agent J (Will Smith) is having partner trouble. He can't find a good one, or even a human one.

Central Park, New York. A spaceship lands expelling a wormy thing. The wormy thing morphs into the second thing it comes across, which happily for us, is a magazine illustration of a lingerie model who happens to look like Lara Flynn Boyle.

The creature is on a mission to retrieve an all powerful object, first stop is a pizza parlour where the owner turns out to be an alien, who denies all knowledge of the object. His life is short.

An employee, Rita (Rosario Dawson) who has witnessed the attack is interviewed by MiB Agent J, who promptly falls for her.

The object was meant to have been sent off Earth many years before by Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones), however, it seems this has not been the case and the item is still on the planet which is a drawback as it will vaporise the Earth in a few hours time. Since the retired Agent K is the only one who knows anything about it, Agent J is dispatched to recruit Agent K once more, restore his memory, find the item, outwit the recent arrival and Save-the-Planet. Not necessarily in that order. J sets off to accomplish this with help from his last partner, Frank the Pug and pawn shop owner Jeebs (Tony Shalhoub). Easy Peasy.

Well not actually since Serleena, our lingerie clad alien, has taken over the MiB offices holding Chief Zed (Rip Torn) hostage, thus preventing Agent K from getting his memory back and, further more, sent forth cronies to track down Agent K.

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1997, oddball comic book Men in Black given Will Smith's cool hip dude playing off Tommy Lee Jones deadpan acting style, coupled with Barry (The Addams Family) Sonnenfeld's delirious directorial style and Rick Baker's funny make-up creations became a mega hit film.

So here we are again. This is from the
if it ain't broke, don't fix it school of film making. In fact, I'm not convinced they bothered to write a new script at all but merely recycled that from the first film, the mcguffin is once more a tiny bauble being persued by the slimy but this time slinky monster.

There are some differences. This time round Will Smith is the experienced agent, and Tommy Lee Jones the wet behind the ears newcomer (at least until he gets his memory back).

Instead of Vincent D'Onofrio's grotesque bug (incidentally a massively underated performance in my opinion, you try it), we get Lara Flynn Boyle with cleavage, can't be bad.

Linda Fiorentino is sorely missed, the part is tossed away in a casual remark from J that she wanted to return to the morgue. Instead we get Frank the Pug for a while as J's partner, mugging for all it's worth and an underused doe-eyed Rosario Dawson.

Agent K has resumed a "normal life" as a post master, which is where Agent J finds him, cue some funny business revealing what really goes on at your average post office. None of which should be at all surprising really.

Product placement is alarmingly to the fore, take a list with you like they used to give to kids on school coach trips and tick 'em off as you go, I'll give you some to start, Playstation, Sprint and Burger King. The latter have a particularly dismal set of Kiddie meal give aways I might note.

On the plus side, it is laugh out loud funny from time to time, Smith and Jones have effortless chemistry and charisma. Spielberg takes a ribbing and look for cameos by Rick Baker and Barry Sonnenfeld. There's also an oddball poor taste anorexia joke, make of that what you will.

The film runs a brisk 88 minutes, 10 minutes shorter than it's predecessor, the US distributor decided to add a short cartoon with it to pad the run time, I didn't get in to this at all since I suspected an
advertising ruse, you don't normally get short films in the US you see.

At the end of the time you've spend in the company of Men in Black II, it has been nice to visit with old friends, but there's nothing new here and this is easily one of the lighter low cal snacks of the Summer Blockbuster season so far.

Recommended to my friends only if they are fans.

Men in Black II opens in the UK 2nd August 2002.

Summary: