Slashdot Mirror
Review: Men In Black II
The story line is almost irrelevant. Will Smith (Agent Jay) has to neuralize one dumb partner after another, and ends up with a smart-mouthed, sometimes hilarious pug for a partner. He pines for his former sidekick Tommy Lee Jones (Agent Kay), now neuralized and working for the institution with the greatest number of aliens, the U.S. Post Office. (The movie, like the first, gets off some great double entendres and inside jokes).
The movie opens with a campy Peter Graves spoof on the Ed Woods' style sci-fi movies of the 50's and 60's. Simply, Lara Flynn Boyle plays Serleena, the powerful alien queen ravaging earth to get her hands on a distant planet's light source. If she isn't stopped, the world will be destroyed, of course. Her prescence forces the MIB agency (headed by Sid, played by Rip Torn) to go and de-neuralize Kay, who comes back to re-join his buddy and save the world.
This is all beside the point, of course. The whole film is a device for Sonnenfeld's loopy rags on Martha Stewart (not perhaps as funny as it would have been a month ago) and Michael Jackson. There are hilarious locker room and worm aliens, and blessedly, the movie never takes itself seriously for a single second. Like the better parts of the Scream series, the movie ends up spoofing itself and the people who loved it.
If you go see it, all you need to know is that the surprise originality of the first is missing, mostly because we know what to expect, but the loopy and inventive spirit of MIB is very much alive.
CmdrTaco my 2 bits is that this movie was bland. It probably is my least favorite of the last half dozen movies I've seen. I loved the original, but this just doesn't have the punch of the first. Its got its moments, but the whole ride is weak. Watch Lilo & Stich instead ;)
"He's a Ballchinian!"
--
grep "xercist"
It has also lost some of the originality. What happened to new movies with original screenplays?
Crapdot
News from birds. Stuff that splatters.
Saw Lilo and Stitch opening weekend. Like attendence at Powerpuff Girls, we were the only ones in our demographic in the theater. We also laughed harder and louder than anyone else. People probably thought we were stoned.
Speaking of which...why hasn't there been a slashdot review of Lilo and Stitch?
Say what you will for this movie. The short that preceded it was absolutely hilarious.
:)
I believe I laughed more for those few minutes then I have at many full length movies.
I don't want to start too many spoilers on a root thread, so instead of listing the appearances, I'll just ask. Who all did people notice that they think may have been missed. I'll look for them next time.
"Sid"?? I'm pretty sure (and now positive after an IMDB check) that it's "Zed".
However, I will agree that the movie wasn't like the first, and for some reason, most of the CGI SFX seems poorly meshed with the rest of the visuals (for example, the two-headed alien). And TLJones didn't have the same deadpan that his character really needed (compared with the first). I will say, however, that getting Patrick Warburton (star of "The Tick") to play Agent T was a good choice and provided some good opening laughs.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
The Boss's name is ZED , not Sid. That's zed as in the last letter of the alphabet in all English-speaking nations except the U.S., where, for some unkonwn reason, we call it zee
www.wavefront-av.com
"why hasn't there been a slashdot review of Lilo and Stitch?"
It's in the queue behind "Pokemon II", "The Care Bears Movie", and "The Land Before Time IV"
Is your workplace ADA compliant?
The reviewer should pay a little more attention when he decides to write a review. The fact that he missed the part about the leader being Zed, not "Sid" is a big indicator of how much he missed.
MIB movies are not really about the plot. They are about mind expansion. About reading between the lines. And about perspective. That our perception is marred by the flaws of our memory, and our wishful thinking, and our emotional pain.
That your world view is just one of many, and pointedly, that thats OK.
Wrath of Kahn. Toy Story 2. Empire which was better than SW:ANH. I liked Aliens better than Alien but that one is not as widely accepted. Also many of the Star Trek movies are better than the first one.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
I swear, you people are self destructing yourselves so that you can't enjoy the $7 spent on watching a movie.
So far, I've read a lot of comments like 'unoriginal' or 'repackaged' or 'sucked' or whatever.
Blah blah blah.
You guys are kinda missing the point to watching a movie. The idea isn't to get exposed to some killer plot, the idea is to have fun. That means: Don't take it too seriously. MiiB is not part 2 of an epic trilogy. It's a comedy, it's meant to entertain for about 90 minutes or so. And it does do that. But, if you sit there being all critical about it the whole time, you're ruining it for yourself. Blame the movie if you want, but remember that's your $7.50 you're burning up.
The first problem I see is that it's being horribly overanalyzed. One guy went on to say "they shouldn't have written out the chick at the end of MiB, bad bad bad.". Err okay. So you didn't like the movie because it didn't extend the first one by 90 minutes.
Another guy went on to say '...another Wil Smith pop-corn action movie.' Can you say 'oversimplified'? Put it like that, and anything can sound stupid. 'Slashdot is like another Wil Smith pop-corn action movie'. See my point?
You can't possibly enjoy a movie if you sit there and pretend you can make it better. (you can't. All you can do is 'fix' the problems you see with it.) Instead, just sit down, watch it, have fun. MiiB is meant to be silly. It's not meant to be epic, it's meant to be fun. Smile.
If it's not your type of movie, don't go see it. Don't bug us about it either. We clear?