Men in Black II

December 10, 2004

Rated: PG-13 Runtime: 94 min Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Men in Black II is a complete retread of the original, but in this case that’s not a bad thing. A sequel can go in a lot of directions. They can take the same characters and tell a new story, or they can continue the previous story. The ones we dread are when the studio basically remakes the same movie again with a slightly different premise in a blatent attempt to just cash in on the name of the original movie. On the surface, that is what Men in Black II does, but it worked because they pulled off just enough surprises and good laughs to thoroughly entertain us.

Men in Black II

If you’ve seen the first movie, the plot of the second is going to sound very familiar. We find that “J”, Will Smith, has become a great agent. Meanwhile “K”, Tommy Lee Jones, is still retired. However, a nasty alien shows up and Earth is once again in danger. The catch is that only “K” has the information needed to defeat the threat. So “K” is brought out of retirement, “reneuralized”, and we’re back to business as usual with the Men in Black out to save the planet.

From the first movie, we already know the premise that many people on Earth are actually aliens, but the movie still pulls off a few surprises. Many of our favorite aliens have returned for the sequel along with J, K and Zed. But we also get our share of new aliens and the creature effects are still amazing. Perhaps most importantly though, we get some new toys in the form of bigger guns and especially J’s new ride. And we still want a deneuralizer, our relationships with women would last a lot longer!

This would be a very easy movie to criticize. It is not original at all. It is purely an attempt to do big summer box office as a big franchise sequel. But if the original Men In Black left you wanting more, we think you’ll like it. The effects are huge and brilliant, and the laughs and surprises were enough to keep us quite entertained. We laughed out loud quite a few times including a couple of real side-splitters. Also, as usual with big budget SciFi, you’ll wanna see this one on the big screen. So go see it!

Posted by Billy Bob | Filed Under 5 Stars, Action, Johnny Knoxville, Lara Flynn Boyle, PG-13, Rip Torn, SciFi, Theatrical, Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith