MEN IN BLACK II (2002) Somebody neuralize me...I want to forget! Men In Black II is the very embodiment, the apotheosis if you will, of the soulless Hollywood sci-fi sequel-by-committee. It just doesn't get any more hackneyed than this - all the ingredients you've come to expect in such a film are here. The plot, about a quest for a magic artefact that could Destroy The World In The Wrong Hands. The name of the magic artefact: The Light Of Zartha. Massively destructive, theoretically terrifying/horrifying action sequences which, by their PG-13 nature, are too timid to thrill on any level. And, of course, Will Smith. Armed with the standard assortment of "I'm so cool" jokes and another putrid pop rap song. Just about every aspect of this movie is a cheek short of being half-assed. MIBII opens with a spaceship zipping by no fewer than four pretty (and apparently inhabited) CGI planets and destroying them in different, pretty ways. It's all very nice to look at, though it's arguably the most violent sequence in cinema history, set to lighthearted music, y'know, for contrast. The ship that destroyed those planets now lands on earth, and squirts out Lara Flynn Boyle (sporting a ghastly pancake makeup job), who wants to find the Light Of Zartha before the MIB's can. She gets a few bad CGI sight gags, before she figures out that CGI sight gags generally don't work too well and gives it up. She is unmenacing and unfunny and continues to work hard toward proving my suspicion that no cast member of The Practice can be worth watching in anything. Nominal twist on the otherwise rehashed plot: this time it's Will Smith who's the experienced agent, and it's Tommy Lee Jones who's the rookie, because he had himself neuralized in order to hide vital information about the Light Of Zartha, or more importantly, to pad out the movie a bit and give the two of them an excuse to somewhat reverse roles. I feel a little bad for Tommy Lee Jones - I know it's not 1995 anymore and he's not in every single movie these days, but he shouldn't have to play the straight man to Will Smith. Nobody should, except maybe...whose schtick is more one-dimensional than Will Smith's? I've got it - Gallagher. I don't really know what else to say about this movie; the effects and action are plentiful, but not really believable, like the giant worm which occasionally tries to eat the subway but is otherwise actually allowed to live in the subway. The CGI is too obvious, and the action scenes pretend to have lots at stake but we all know nobody's going to get hurt. There are seemingly hundreds of other creatures and aliens throughout the movie, though none of them looked interesting enough for me to remember a day later, except the easy, high-concept stuff like a talking dog that returns from the first movie, and a guy with two heads. Johnny Knoxville is that guy, with a smaller second head poking out of his backpack, also played by Knoxville and an underfunded FX team. He doesn't really do or say anything funny. There's a brief Michael Jackson appearance from just before the day his face imploded, and I liked the final shot of the movie, which is a riff on the final shot from the first movie, a whimsical poke at how puny and insignificant we are. A small civilization in a locker is more interesting than the remainder of the movie. Men In Black II is obviously meant to be cinema junk food, and I don't hold that against it - what I hold against it is that it sucks. There's lots of perfectly enjoyable cinema junk food out there, but this ain't it. Men In Black wasn't great, but it was like a nice little Mars bar. This is more like a half spoon of sugar sprinkled on a bowl of bacon fat. BACK TO THE M's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE