Do Over: EYG Sunday Morning Revisit Week 9

Sequel time this week on the Do Over and we head into the early 2000s with Men in Black 2. I remember being a big fan of the original Men in Black and also of Twin Peaks and The Practice, where our main villain of this film, Lara Flynn Boyle, appeared. It couldn’t have failed. However…

I disliked the sequel quite a bit the first time I watched this. Will my opinion hold up?

Spoiler alert: Yes, it does.

A new intergalactic threat arrived on earth in the tentacled form of Lara Flynn Boyle and she was in search of a new MacGuffin called The Light of Zartha. Coincidentally, only the neuralyzed K (Tommy Lee Jones) knows where it is so his old partner J (Will Smith) had to retrieve K. help him get his memories back before the The Light of Zartha explodes (apparently in the next couple of days) and destroys the earth. All the while avoiding the dangerous alien Lara Flynn Boyle. Oh, Johnny Knoxville is here too, with two heads as if one isn’t bad enough.

The plot on this is just ridiculous coincidental. There is no way everything falls into place perfectly for this movie to have taken place. Everything dealing with this story is just poorly written and lacks any comprehensive story design.

There was a ton of CGI and special effects in Men in Black II as well and most of it is clearly at a lower level than we are used to. I would go as far as to say that it was not up to par for a film in 2002 either.

Then, a lot of the same jokes and beats from the original are reused in the sequel. That is not an uncommon thing, but there are really a lot of them. Everything from K now being the person unfamiliar with the real world and having to take hints from J to blowing the head off of Tony Shalhoub so it can grow back. No matter how much I loved Tony Shalhoub, I think that is the only reason to include this character in this movie.

There are some good jokes scattered throughout and, of course, the chemistry between K and J shined like a light through the mess around them. Jones and Smith are easily the best part of this movie and anything that was enjoyable about it was directly from them.

Although did enjoy Rosario Dawson too, though her part was underwritten and I wanted more from her even if her part of the plot was perhaps the biggest eye-rolling section of the film.

In the end, there is enough here to not hate myself for re-watching it, but it is not a good movie and my original opinion looks to be right on the money.