Story sinks summer's big sequel

For a movie with such big-name stars, an arsenal of cool, shiny weapons of assorted sizes, hilarious cameos, and outstanding special effects, it's a shame that I have to give MIB 2 such a negative review.

In a movie that is seemingly geared toward 12-year-olds, how suitable is a character with testicles hanging from his chin? Thanks to this movie, millions of parents are going to have an uncomfortable car ride home trying to explain what a scrotum is and where it is normally located. At least the alien had the decency to shave before the fight scene.

Unfortunately, that was only one of the things that didn't jive. The story was beat. Only a sequel can get away with having such a poorly developed plot. Speaking of poor development, where's the character development? This takes place five years after the original MIB, and Will Smith — I mean Agent J — is acting even less like an agent of a secret organization than he was when he was a new recruit.

Let's elaborate on this for just a moment. In MIB, Will Smith played a street-smart beat cop who was thrown into the wackiness of life as a man in black. Being a rookie to all this strange alien stuff, he made all sorts of funny remarks and stupid mistakes. Now, five years later, he's learned quite a bit about the various oddities he may come across in a single workday. So how come he doesn't seem this way?

He seems even more like he's fresh off the streets than he was in the first movie. Sure, the writers include a few scenes in which he seems to know quite a bit about alien life and artifacts, but they also add in a whole bunch of scenes in which he speaks in what I'd have to call a "less than civilized manner". You'd think that, after five years working with the men in black, he'd have toned down a little and, at the very least, not gotten more ghetto-fabulous. It just seems backward to me.

Tommy Lee Jones, having returned to civilian life after a "coma", holds a mundane job as a postal worker somewhere in Massachusetts, but keeps his non-civilian edge in the personality department. He and Smith have a few misunderstandings, but after Will finally gets Kay’s memory back through the use of a de-neuralizer, he's back to his good old self as Agent K. Not much development here, but… I think that's OK.

All I can say is that, in efforts to improve the movie's laugh-factor, Will Smith's character is stunted. And the laugh-factor was low, I can tell you that. There were a bunch of parts that seemed like they were supposed to garner a chuckle or chortle and got nothing. Seriously, there were only a few parts worth a guffaw; most left you waiting for the punch line.

Even Johnny Knoxville’s character could have been funnier. The fact that he wasn’t all that funny wasn’t even his fault. It just seemed like the writers didn’t really want him in the movie. Then, they just removed the character before the grand finale. Thank goodness for the main baddie played by Lara Flynn Boyle. She played her shallow role well and had a fabulous body, which was generously shown numerous times.

Another thing that irritated me, though, was the advertising involved with this thing. It was like watching a really long, albeit wacky, commercial for the new Mercedes E-class. Sure it's a nice car, but does the camera need to focus on it whenever it's in a scene? The answer is no. I have to wonder how much DaimlerChrysler is going to charge for the hyperdrive option. Also, Sprint was just way too apparent. Maybe it was just because of the five minutes worth of crappy advertising they put us through before the movie, but I don't like Sprint very much anymore.

As for the movie, it was what you might expect of a sequel to a popular action/comedy/sci-fi movie. Sequels are almost always worse than the originals, but this is just because the originals are hard acts to follow. Unfortunately, MIB 2 was not as good as the first one, but it was still somewhat entertaining, and the special effects were really quite impressive.

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