men in black

DVD rentalage was a bit of a retro-trip this week with Men In Black.

The reason for the rental was that I've never properly watched MiB all the way through. I mean, I think I've pretty much seen most of it at one time or another, but I don't recall ever managing to sit and watch it all the way through.

However, I'm guessing that most people have seen it by now, so I'm not sure I really need to go into much depth here. Especially since I basically agree with what other people have said - it's a really funny film.

What makes it so good is that the comedy is very well played. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones make for a really good pairing. Jones is a really good straight man who plays it so straight it would seem almost weird if it wasn't contrasted by Smith who's performance is very high energy.

It's also quite clever. I must admit one thing I didn't appreciate was that it was based on a comic book. I don't think it was a direct adaptation, more taking the general ideas and working them into a film.

The rental edition I watched was boosted by a couple of really good commentaries. By the looks of things it was a special edition 2-disk thing as there's clearly more content on a second disk (this wasn't sent to me and was separately listed on my rental list, but I removed it).

Anyway, one of the commentaries is sort of a Mystery Theatre 3000 thing. That won't make much sense to most people, but basically silhouettes of the director and Tommy Lee Jones are projected at the bottom of the screen (a bit like subtitles) and stuff is drawn on the screen too.

It doesn't really enhance the actual commentary track as such, but it was a nice little feature I'd not seen before.

Anyway, the basic point is that I really enjoyed the film and if you've never seen it before it's well worth a watch.