Men in Black II

Release Date: July 3, 2002

Watch Date: August 28, 2023

“With aliens once again threatening Earth, Agent J will need to refresh his partner’s memory and get them both ready for a high-octane mission.”

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    Sequels are never as good as the original. This is just a fact of life.

    That being said, ‘Men in Black II’ is actually pretty good. It comes to close to the magic of it’s original, the story is still heartfelt, the jokes land well, the action is well done, and the CGI mostly holds up. But it still misses the mark by just a touch.

    Firstly, I don’t like the characterization of J. He went from this goofball who flies by the seat of his pants to the biggest hard ass in the MIB? That doesn’t make a lot of sense. His whole charm, the whole thing that got him hired by the MIB in the first place was the way that he looked outside of the box for solutions, that he had creative approaches to things, and now he’s a strict workaholic? He seems to revert to his normal self once K is in the picture, which is maybe a choice they made, but it comes across as just poor writing. I will say that I do like that they were true to the kindness of his character, with him still making long speeches in an attempt to make people’s lives better after neuralyzers.

    Secondly, the villain is not intimidating. She’s a gorgeous woman, I’m not really sure what the whole point of her evilness is. She simply wants to take over Zartha, I guess? Which isn’t necessarily evil, it’s kind of more a war of conquest, which we humans are definitely not unfamiliar with and which it makes no sense that we got involved in. Of course, K’s humanity is the reason the Earth is involved, and humanity is often unpredictable. But I’m not really sure why the Light had to stay off planet for twenty-five years, and why Zartha could not be conquered by Sarleena without it, because once you know what the Light is it feels like Zartha would have probably been weaker without it? Anyways, without a really understandable motivation, and stacked up against the absolute disgusting over the top creepiness of the the first films villain Sarleena just comes off a little…flat. A little like every other villain in every other movie who wants to destroy the world.

    I will say the one thing they don’t do is just ignore the fact that J did have another partner by the end of the first film, L, and they do at least give a throwaway line early on as to why she is no longer employed by MIB.

    Look, you can tell that there was a lot of success from the first ‘Men in Black’ movie, and that this is a film where they tried to cut all the parts people didn’t like and only stick in things that worked, the dog Frank, the worm guys, Will Smith being a jokester, when he can be, a romance plot, and an alien trying to take over the world. But it just sort of undoes any character growth from the first film, losing it’s heart, while in some ways being more typically entertaining than the first film.

    Sometimes I will pretend sequels don’t exist, and I wouldn’t with this one, it’s still a strong entry in the MIB franchise. It’ll make you laugh, and if you’ve never seen it before you might genuinely enjoy trying to figure out the puzzle, plus J and K have a ton of chemistry that I love to see play out on screen. But it’s definitely not the original, and that loss of spark is kind of sad.

    Also, Will Smith’s rap at the end is very bad – or at least unmemorable – and that’s sort of a tragedy within itself.