Subject: Retrospective: Men In Black (1997)

From: [email-masked] (Serdar Yegulalp)
Date: 22 May 1998 21:39:55 GMT

Men In Black (1997)
* * 1/2
A movie review by Serdar Yegulalp
Copyright 1998 by Serdar Yegulalp

CAPSULE: Winsomely entertaining SF farce with two great performances. Too
bad it's all empty calories.

There is never a question that MEN IN BLACK is supposed to be sly,
on-the-one, and tongue-in-cheek. It is. It's a comic book for the kind of
people who wouldn't be caught dead reading one, and for that reason I felt a
little bit let down by it.

The premise is simple enough: it's a spinning-together of every
alien-related urban myth out there, with the Men In Black as the principal
protagonists. They're a corps of elite super-secret agents who police alien
activity on Earth, in exchange for the destruction of their identities.
Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) is trolling for a new partner, and finds one in a
wiseass New York cop (Will Smith). (This is the second time in a row Smith
gets to deck an alien; when does Jones get his next shot?)

There are moments where the movie works hilariously. Smith, alias J, wonders
what the heck is up when he's asked to come into MIB HQ for an "entrance
exam"; the way the scene plays out is a mini-masterpiece of comedic set-ups
and payoffs, especially the shooting gallery. But then the movie starts to
take its flimsy plot seriously -- too seriously, as when it tries to get an
abhorrent amount of mileage out of a gigantic CGI cockroach.

This is undeniably amusing, but the funniest stuff in the movie seems to be
tucked away in the corners and crevices. Take, for instance, the whole bit
where the agents read the tabloid papers to get their latest scoops. That
begs a question all by itself: if the freakin' tabloids get this
information, then how come the MIBs have to hole up in their high-tech
headquarters and beg for scraps? That's only one example of how the movie
doesn't quite carry its thinking through to merciless and potentially
hilarious extremes. Instead we get a plot about a stolen galaxy (yes, a
stolen galaxy) that any member of the audience can figure out if they pay
attention. And there are several effects stuntpieces (like an alien
childbirth scene that ends exactly the way you'd expect, with the alien baby
urping up tons of luminescent goo all over Will Smith) that go on and on
until the joke is played painfully out. One of the surest signs that
cinematic comedy is dying is when every joke is allowed to run too much of a
course.

Yes, the movie is fun. Specifically, the actors are fun. Tommy Lee Jones, as
Agent K, fits into the role beautifully -- a lot more snugly than one of the
aliens in the movie trying to wear a corpse as a kind of disguse. Smith is
sidesplitting even in the tiniest moments; there's a bit where he totally
misinterprets everything a morgue doctor (Linda Fiorentino, also good) says.
But somehow it's all tell and no show. I went in expecting a good time, and
I got one, but I also got the sense they'd missed about twice as many
opportunities as they'd exploited.

I mentioned at the start of the review that this felt like a comic book for
the kind of people who wouldn't be caught dead reading one. If the folks who
made this think they were having the last word in weird and goofy, then they
should read SAM AND MAX.

LOCATION FOOTNOTE: This is the only movie set in New York where I've seen a
foot-chase begin near Grand Central Station and end, seconds later, at the
Guggenheim.