OK the sequel to Men in Black has been released, and the first thing you ask yourself is, do I care? It's an important question that definitely should be asked by everyone, firstly because those who never liked the original should definitely not go and see the sequel, and secondly because those who did like the original need to ask themselves if they liked it enough to laugh at the same jokes all over again?
I know that this is a bit of an overused expression nowadays (I've heard critics say the same thing about Die Hard 3 for crying out loud) but MIB2 really is just a rehash of the first film, and it treads a careful line to make sure that it sticks to the rules of the rehash. Rules like if a one scene character was popular in the original then make him a star, which results in a great character being overused. There are quite a few instances in this one including among others Jeeves, the worm guys, and Frank the talking dog, but for the sake of keeping this review in a decent length I'll just mention the one Frank. I loved this character in the first film, but the trouble is that the novelty quickly wears off, so while Frank certainly has some really funny moments in his opening scene, after that I found myself constantly wondering why I was seeing the same jokes fly at me every few seconds. This could have been forgiven if it was the only time, but like I said they do it with multiple characters and I soon found that all of the best characters from the first film were ruined this time around and they didn't provide any good characters to substitute them with.
The worst part is that it's not just the characters that have been recycled, all the best jokes have been too, and you can see these ones coming from a mile away. When Will Smith takes Tommy Lee Jones to the weapons Cabinet and says that he's going to get him his favorite gun, you immediately know what gun he's going to give him. What do you know, but the writers have been kind enough to let us be right, at a time when I personally badly wanted to be wrong. There are just too many examples of this for me to mention all of them, and besides I wouldn't want to 'spoil' any of the jokes for you would I So to conclude this matter I'll simply state that while a few of the jokes were good, the film was desperately in need of some new writers. Even if their jokes were bad, at least they'd still be new. OK then, I think that maybe it's time to stop talking about this stuff and start talking about the cast.
The cast is pretty much the same as the first film, so that all the returning characters bring the same actors which is a good thing as they did brilliantly the first time around. Unfortunately, with the exception of Tommy Lee Jones, none of them are as good as they were first time round. Jones still manages to convey K with the same hilarious deadpan humour, and if I'm perfectly honest I preferred his dead pan reactions to the shock of seeing the aliens for the first time, than I did to Smiths brilliant over the top reactions in the original. I mean at one point he finds out that one of his machines is actually a five armed alien and he simply looks annoyed and says "No smoking." It's hilarious on screen, unfortunately the same can't be said for Smith in the role of mentor. He's always watchable, but he just doesn't seem as confident in this film as he did the first time around, and the result is that I laughed at a lot less of his jokes. As everyone knows though that every hero needs to rounded off with a good villain, but unfortunately they don't even have this. Lara Fin Boyle is not even slightly menacing as the villain. It's not really her fault as the writing only required her to look good, and unfortunately she's now starting to look old. I mean she certainly does look good, but there are much better looking women out there who could've played the role with a lot more menace.
I'm going to conclude now but I'll try and conclude on a slightly more positive note, because I did enjoy this film and this is probably the worst review I've ever given for a film that I actually liked. With this in mind then I'm going to mention the worm guys. Unlike most of the returning characters the worm guys were actually given a fair amount to do, and I found myself laughing at all their jokes. Particularly towards the end when they armed themselves. This could've been to do with the fact that they are regulars in the animated show, and as such Sonnenfeld had more to work with. I don't know, all I do know is that these characters were hilarious and helped to bring this film above average.
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