Paul Greenwood reviews

• Cert:
• Running time: 88 minutes
• Year: 2002
• Released: 1st August July 2002
• Widescreen Ratio: 1.85:1
• Rating: 3/10

Director:

Barry Sonnenfeld (Men In Black 1 & 2, Wild Wild West, Get Shorty, The Addams Family)

Cast:

Agent K: Tommy Lee Jones
Agent J: Will Smith
Serleena: Lara Flynn Boyle
Zed: Rip Torn
Scrad/Charlie: Johnny Knoxville
Laura Vasquez: Rosario Dawson
Jack Jeebs: Tony Shalhoub
Agent T: Patrick Warburton

This is little short of a travesty. Where the first film was fresh and original, this is merely a tired collection of abysmal jokes (remarkably, there are even more tumbleweed moments here than there were in Goldmember) and dodgy effects hanging around and waiting for a movie to come by. Unfortunately, it never does. Mercifully, we only have to sit and gape in numbed silence for barely 80 minutes, leaving you torn between being glad it's over, and feeling ripped off at having paid £5 for a three-quarter length movie.

Plot rarely matters in special effects driven popcorn movies, but even by those low standards, this is something of an insult. I genuinely can't put into coherent sentences what I think this film was about, other than some snake-headed space-bitch wanting to find something called The Light of Zartha, for purposes it hurts my head to try and remember. Only Agent K knows the whereabouts, but he doesn't know he knows because, if you recall, he had his memory wiped at the end of the first film and, when we meet him here, he now works in a post office and is called Kevin. The plan is to de-neuralize him so the Men In Black can find the Light before the earth is destroyed... blah, blah, blah.

There's very much a sense that the makers are desperately trying re-hash the elements of the original that got the biggest laughs, as well as cramming in as many bizarre new aliens as possible, because they're painfully aware of their lack of original ideas. As a result, Shalhoub returns in a pointless cameo as alien shopkeeper, Jeebs, one of the first film's most memorable and amusing characters. Here, he doesn't even raise a smile. Frank the talking dog gets trotted out again, and actually provides almost all of the few available laughs. The worm guys get more screen time than before, but they are now more annoying than funny. Thank God for the ever reliable Torn as Zed, bringing some much needed class to the proceedings.