Men in Black II (2002)

As Good As It Gets

Absolutely the worst movie.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

I can understand why they would want to make a sequel to MIB, but that doesn't mean they should've.This film falls into the trap many sequels do, in the sense that they try to do too much, whilst keeping true to what made the original work, and it in the end doesn't do either that well.There are starry cameos along the way, but they can't hide the fact that this sequel isn't that good.Smith and Lee Jones remain good in their roles, and their chemistry carries some of the film through its rough patches, but they can't paper over all the crack.

The general idea is a prodigy of simplicity: to turn a whole set of successful science-fiction dramas or romances or adventures into a full-blown comedy and make all these frightening things that make you dream of a world that will never exist like in Star Wars or in Star Trek hilariously funny so that the audience just never stops laughing. Steven Spielberg adds to that a direct allusion to Back to the future but within the science fiction space adventure genre and it becomes phony more than funny, with me grown up meeting me four years old.The first two films are really funny because they remain within one layer of time. The third one becomes something different, nostalgic, sentimental even, and that breaks the fun to turn it into fear: the fear the negated past or the traumatized past may turn the future which is our present into a nightmare, a PTSS case of time travel trauma, something like PTTTSS, Post Time Travel Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Welcome to the asylum for deeply disturbed minds and brains.The most attractive and fascinating aspect is the phenomenal palette and variety of extra-terrestrials you are navigating among. Obviously all of them are just the figment of the imaginations of a band of deranged probably young people generally called artists though there might be a few older ones who are more perverse than deranged, or perversely corrugated. You cannot find them serious. They are all of them just impossible mixtures of all kinds of living gadgets, except in the last one where one of them is well hidden in a human body and is deadly frightening, not funny at all. The next element that is striking is the role of the Black man in black, just recruited in the first film, trained and excellently performing and competent in the second film and growing melancholy and sentimental in the last film when he sees himself when he was four, when his father was killed under his adult eyes and when with a magic flash the little boy will only remember his father was a hero. And of course it is his partner who erases the truth from the little boy's memory, the partner he meets again in the present some seconds later at the end of the film. That episode brings the saga to an end because the fun has been drunk right down to the tea leaves at the bottom of the cup.We all, absolutely all of us, have rebuilt the image of the father we had, in pink or in black, in celestial blue or in fiery red, but what we remember of our father is nothing but a mental reconstruction, a Lego reconstruction. All the pieces are true, real and absolutely precise, but the pieces have been reassembled in any creative or traumatic way and that's the image we have of the man we call our father. That's normal. That's natural. That's the truth if there is one under the sun. Our memory is selective. In fact, we remember everything without fault but our conscious memory is the Lego construction I have just spoken of. You may have in some drawer, or in your pocket, something that is attached to your father in a way or another and that reached you when you were three or four. This thing is attached to you and you are attached to it in an unbreakable union and yet you don't really know why you're attached to it and it is attached to you. It might be a sentence that comes back regularly and that makes you sick with fear or happy with instant bliss, and yet you do not know where it comes from, except that it comes from a long, long time ago and you still have it in your mind because it was a positive or negative trauma, and, mind you, there are positive happy traumas that have the same power as negative ones, except that this power makes you excel and not run away and hide under your bed.If you want to have some fun in an environment of extraterrestrial monsters, with some dangerous situations and beings and many happy just in time right in time epiphanies and salvations, you have to let yourself slide into these hairy and over-twisted stories and forget about your bills and the fact that the heating does not work. You'll survive since these crazy characters did survive.Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU

Men in Black was great. It's humor was incredibly clever and it was really fun. The second one on the other hand just kind of failed to deliver. It wasn't horrible or anything, it was just kind of a disappointing sequel. Luckily 10 years later Men in Black 3 redeemed the series, and all was forgiven. Men in Black 2 still had clever jokes, they just weren't as common as the first. Well let's look at the plot. A Kylothian named Serleena (Lara Flynn Boyle) has come to Earth to look for the Light of Zartha and stir up trouble. Agent J (Will Smith) needs help to stop Serleena, due to his habit of memory erasing his partners when they don't meet his standards. The only man capable of J's partnership is the now retired Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones). J has to go find K, restore his memory, and stop Serleena. This story should have been more humorous than it was. And don't get me wrong, it had funny moments, many of which were cleverly done. But the first film does it better than this one. If you're curious to see a follow up, then check it out. But if you want a clever comedy, the first and third films just do it better.

Men in Black II is a science fiction movie about the conspiracy theory of the men in black. The conspiracy theorist believe that these Men in black go around and take care of Americas most secret problems. In men in black II Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones return for the sequel of Men in Black. Like in the first movie they also confront aliens again for a second and far worst problem. Men in Black II is a great movie for three outstanding reasons the pace, the action and of course the acting.The pace for Men in Black II is very quick for an hour and twenty eight minute movie. From start to finish you will never catch your self checking your watch to see how much time is left in this movie. When the pace of the movie starts to slow, to build story, you still aren't caught in boring monologue for what seems like hours. The director does a great job of jumping seamlessly from a serious moment to a more comical moment. A lot of the excitement of the action is created because of the fantastic job done by the director with the pace.Thanks to the pace of the movie the action becomes more exciting. The action in this movie is just fantastic. We have all seen the movies that the action is way to far over the top, with destruction of whole cities and even whole countries. Well this movie has very believable action. The fight sciences between the men in black and the aliens is marvelous you never get bored with long elaborately choreographed fights. Now the icing on the cake, the acting. The acting in this movie is bar none. With big names like Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones how could the acting be bad. Will Smith has featured in great films like Focus, Independence day, I am Legend and I Robot. Will Smith is a proved actor who is at it again in this movie. Will Smiths costar is no slouch either Tommy Lee Jones has also stared in his own hand full of great movies like No Country for Old Men and Space Cowboys. So as you can see this movie has a very star studded cast.The question is would I recommend this movie? Yes I would definitely recommend this movie. I would recommend this movie to everyone because of the great pace the movie has that creates great action scene and even helps great actors seem like even better actors. If you have not seen this movie I recommend you stop what you are doing right now and go watch it you will get a laugh and you will learn of a whole new world of secrets kept hidden by the men in black.