Trailer, via Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Men in Black II Wastes Its Stars on a Script That Forgets Them
KEY FACTS
– Title: Men in Black II (stylized as MIIB)
– Year: 2002
– Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
– Writers: Robert Gordon, Barry Fanaro
– Runtime: 88 minutes
– Score: 3.8 of 10 (Rotten Tomatoes 38%)
Men in Black II arrived in 2002, five years after the 1997 original, with Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith back in the black suits and Barry Sonnenfeld back in the director’s chair. It runs 88 minutes. That is the shortest thing about it, and the only figure that works in its favor.
The sequel had every advantage a studio could hand a filmmaker: a proven premise, two movie stars at the height of their pull, and a supporting cast that includes Rip Torn, Lara Flynn Boyle, Johnny Knoxville, Rosario Dawson, Tony Shalhoub and Patrick Warburton. What it does not have is a reason to exist beyond the box office of the first one.
A Sequel Built From the First Film’s Leftovers
Development on Men in Black II started after the original became a hit. Jones, Smith and Sonnenfeld were confirmed by 2001. David Koepp was hired to write the screenplay, then left to work on Spider-Man, and Robert Gordon took over. Barry Fanaro came in later to do final rewrites on Gordon’s treatment.
That is a normal Hollywood relay, but you can feel every handoff in the finished film. The plot returns to the memory wipe — the neuralyzer — and builds an entire act around undoing it.
The story opens in 1978, when a group of aliens called the Zarthans, led by Princess Lauranna, come to Earth and ask the Men in Black for help guarding a powerful item called the Light of Zartha. The MIB refuse, citing their neutral status. Agent K appears to send the Light off-world in a rocket. Serleena, a shapeshifting alien who wants the Light, kills Lauranna and leaves to chase it. Cut to 2002. Agent J has become one of the MIB’s top agents and has a reputation for neuralyzing any partner he decides is emotionally unfit for the job.
Lara Flynn Boyle’s Serleena Never Gets a Movie Worth Her
Serleena comes back after a two-headed alien named Scrad and Charlie tells her the Light is still on Earth. She forces them to help her hunt it. She kills Ben, a Zarthan who runs a pizzeria, when he will not say where the Light is hidden. J catches the case and meets Laura, a witness he is drawn to. He breaks protocol and does not neuralyze her.
That decision should be the spine of the film. It is not.
The movie treats J’s rule-breaking as a plot convenience, then drops it whenever the next set piece needs to start. Lara Flynn Boyle plays Serleena as a seductress, and the film never gives her a single scene that tests her. She is a threat by announcement only. The tagline promises “Same planet. New scum.” What the film delivers is the same villain problem — a menace that talks a lot and does very little that lands.
Johnny Knoxville’s Scrad and Charlie is the movie’s strangest swing. Scrad is a humanoid alien with a second, smaller head named Charlie on a stalk growing out of his neck. Knoxville plays both. It is a gag with a built-in timer, and the film runs it well past the point where the joke was funny. Tony Shalhoub returns as Jack Jeebs, the alien pawnbroker, and his illegal deneuralyzer machine is the one piece of hardware the script actually uses well.
The Movie’s Best Idea Is Buried in the Middle
J finds K in Truro, Massachusetts, working as postmaster. K has no memory of his MIB years. J has to expose K’s coworkers as disguised extraterrestrials to get him to come back. Then J brings him to headquarters to use the deneuralyzer and restore his memories. Serleena, Scrad and Charlie attack the facility. The pair escape and go to Jeebs for the illegal machine. It works, but K still cannot remember the Light — he neuralyzed himself, and those memories have not returned. He did leave himself a series of clues.
That is the best idea in Men in Black II: a man who erased himself and left a trail for a version of himself he would never meet. The film does almost nothing with it. K’s clues are a scavenger hunt, not a character study. Tommy Lee Jones plays the amnesia straight, and he is the only person on screen who seems to know what movie he is in. Will Smith works hard. Rosario Dawson, as Laura, is given the film’s biggest reveal — she is the long-lost Zarthan princess and the power source Serleena is hunting — and almost no scenes to earn it.
Michael Jackson’s Last Film Role, and Other Trivia That Outlasts the Movie
Men in Black II includes Michael Jackson’s last feature film appearance before he died in 2009. He plays himself, asking to be made Agent M. Martha Stewart cameos as herself. Peter Graves plays himself as the host of “Mysteries in History.” These are the moments people remember, and they are remembered as trivia, not as scenes. That is the tell. A comedy sequel best recalled for its cameos is not being recalled for its comedy.
The runtime is 88 minutes, and the film still feels padded. Patrick Warburton’s Agent T is partnered with J, has an incident with Jeff, a gigantic worm-like alien living in the subway, and gets neuralyzed and thrown out of the MIB. It exists to explain why J is alone again, which the audience already understood.
The Verdict on Men in Black II
The published critical score is 3.8 out of 10, with a 38% on Rotten Tomatoes, and that is the right number. Men in Black II is not an incompetent film. It is a lazy one. The production values hold up. The cast is absurdly deep — Torn, Boyle, Knoxville, Dawson, Shalhoub, Warburton. What is missing is a script that trusts any of it.
The first Men in Black moved fast and never stopped to explain itself. The sequel is 88 minutes and keeps stopping to explain itself. It brings back the memory wipe, the straight man, the wisecracking partner, and the secret agency, and it leans on the audience to supply the affection the film has not earned. That is the central failure. A sequel can repeat a formula. It cannot outsource the feeling.
The part worth watching is Tommy Lee Jones. He plays a man with a hole where his life used to be, and for a few scenes the movie almost becomes about that. Then it remembers it has a rocket to launch and a princess to reveal and a worm to throw out of the MIB, and the idea goes away. Men in Black II is a 3.8 of 10 — a waste of two movie stars, one good premise, and 88 minutes that should have been 88 minutes of something else.
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