By Pat French
Movie sequels are the biggest hit or miss prospect in Hollywood. Their entire existence is based on the conceit that occasionally, against all odds, lightning will strike twice. If the first film had any sort of audience, it’s reasonable to expect a decent turn-out on opening weekend. Most don’t carry much interest past that point however, and bad reviews and word-of-mouth often ruin a sequel. Sometimes you get an Empire Strikes Back. Sometimes you get Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation. In the Sequel Files I will analyze those sequels with less than stellar reputations; the movies you probably skipped assuming the worst. Some (perhaps most) deserve their lot, but -as an optimist- I figure there’s maybe a few worth your time.
Today’s Sequel: MIIB.
I love when the abbreviations for a movie make no sense. Independence Day for instance was often abbreviated as ID4. Why? Who the hell knows? I assume Roland Emmerich and company were high as hell when they came up with that. It doesn’t follow any sort of abbreviation logic that I can understand. Men in Black 2 has a similar problem.
Ya’see the first flick was abbreviated as MiB. Totally makes sense. So when they got together and decided to make the sequel, they figured “Hey! I got it! Let’s capitalize that middle ‘I’ and add another one. It’s the Roman numeral for 2. Ya get it?” Well yeah, I get it, but there’s no way I’m looking at that title and seeing anything but Men 2 Black. So now the title of the movie sounds like the next sequential step of Boyz II Men (Preceded by 2 Live Crew and followed by 2 fast 2 furious, obviously). I guess this is kind of a silly point for me to be harping on about, but when you think about how word of mouth can market a movie, you probably don’t want what people talk about to be how silly the title looks. Or maybe that was the scheme all along? Some sort of “At least they’re talking about it” strategy?
Anyhoo, once I got past the title (which was clearly a challenge for me) I discovered that this is not such a bad sequel. Action-comedy is a notoriously difficult genre to do a good sequel too (Actually comedy in general is challenging to sequelize. Seriously, think of three good comedy sequels. I’ll wait). Men 2 Black suffers lightly from your general comedy sequelitis, rehashing of old jokes and such, but it also does a fairly impressive job of expanding the MiB universe.
The plot centers around Agent J (Big Willie Style) uncovering a plot that ties into one of Agent K’s (Tommy Lee Jones) cases. This leads to the obligatory re-neuralizing of Agent K and return to the buddy-cop status quo of the first film. To its’s credit, this plot does not feel particularly contrived. Obviously it’s a very specific set of circumstances built around the idea of getting the two main actors back into the fold (I mean how could it not be) but the path they take from point A to point B feels very organic. It’s actually not even immediate, the plot takes a good portion of time establishing what has happened since the first film and bringing Agent J to the point where he needs to reneuralize his partner. It even does a pretty good job of tying up loose ends from the first film (such as the absence of Linda Fiorentino).
So, it’s around this point in the film that Johnny Knoxville shows up. Nothing against the guy, he can certainly be funny, but his presence in a non-Jackass project can be somewhat alarming. I figure his presence is a sign that I’ve reached the point where the plot will start going downhill, or at least fall apart in a poorly edited clusterfunk. Oddly enough, it holds together pretty well. Men 2 Black is, against all odds, a well-plotted piece of cinema.
So what’s wrong with it? Why do we hear such bad things about it? Well, I’ll concede that it is surely not as funny as the first film. Much of the humor from the first film is from Will Smith’s reactions to the aliens, and they sort of flip that with Tommy Lee Jones gradually regaining his memory. It’s cute, for sure, but it’s not laugh out loud funny. I can at least respect that they didn’t regress Agent J in this fashion, the very mistake that brings most comedy sequels down (Hangover 2 for instance). Also less than impressive are the visual effects. The practical effects hold up just fine, but every time I saw little Frank the Dog talk I just shook my head.
So overall what’s my judgment? If you’re a fan of the first film, this is absolutely worth giving a shot. It puts a lot more effort into forging its own path than many comedy sequels. My only real criticisms are some of the effects not holding up and the jokes not being as consistently funny, which are things you would probably expect going into it anyway.
