Men in Black II Cinema

• Cert:
• Running time: 88 minutes
• Year: 2002
• Released: 1st August July 2002
• Widescreen Ratio: 1.85:1
• Rating: 3/10

Director:

(Men In Black 1 & 2, Wild Wild West, Get Shorty, The Addams Family)

Cast:

This is little short of a travesty.Where the first film was fresh andoriginal, this is merely a tired collection of abysmal jokes (remarkably,there are even more tumbleweed moments here than there were in Goldmember)and dodgy effects hanging around and waiting for a movie to come by.Unfortunately, it never does. Mercifully, we only have to sit and gape innumbed silence for barely 80 minutes, leaving you torn between being gladit’s over, and feeling ripped off at having paid £5 for a three-quarterlength movie.

Plot rarely matters in special effects driven popcorn movies, but even bythose low standards, this is something of an insult. I genuinely can’t putinto coherent sentences what I think this film was about, other than somesnake-headed space-bitch wanting to find something called The Light ofZartha, for purposes it hurts my head to try and remember. Only Agent Kknows the whereabouts, but he doesn’t know he knows because, if you recall,he had his memory wiped at the end of the first film and, when we meet himhere, he now works in a post office and is called Kevin. The plan is tode-neuralize him so the Men In Black can find the Light before the earth isdestroyed… blah, blah, blah.

There’s very much a sense that the makers are desperately trying re-hashthe elements of the original that got the biggest laughs, as well ascramming in as many bizarre new aliens as possible, because they’repainfully aware of their lack of original ideas. As a result, Shalhoubreturns in a pointless cameo as alien shopkeeper, Jeebs, one of the firstfilm’s most memorable and amusing characters. Here, he doesn’t even raise asmile. Frank the talking dog gets trotted out again, and actually providesalmost all of the few available laughs. The worm guys get more screen timethan before, but they are now more annoying than funny. Thank God for theever reliable Torn as Zed, bringing some much needed class to theproceedings.