men in black 2

Well this was disappointing.

A big part of the charm of the original film was the relationship between Will Smith's and Tommy Lee Jones's characters.

The basic set up was that Smith was a world-wise cop who wasn't phased by anything, but then he got pushed into the MIB world where there are aliens everywhere and suddenly he was a wide-eyed noob making errors everywhere.

Meanwhile Jones was an utterly dead-pan seen-it-all before MIB agent. In other words, almost the same as Smith's character.

The comedic interplay between these two characters was made the film good.

However, at the end of the first film, Jones retires, has his memory wiped and goes to live a life with his old love.  As such, at the start of the second film there's something of a role reversal.

Except not.  Smith is now supposed to be the super-wise MiB agent, but Jones's shift into the equivalent role to Smith's in the first film doesn't really work.  When we eventually catch up to him he's supposedly working in the post office and running a tight ship.

But it's also revealed his wife has left him - it just all doesn't work as well.

But what really annoyed me was that when Jones gets back to normal, suddenly Smith's character reverts back to being the noob.  I mean, why would this happen?  It makes no sense and is just odd - why would he suddenly become dumb?

Unless maybe we're supposed to believe he's pretending?  Or maybe he was pretending before?  I dunno - I just didn't get it.

And the trouble is the film is very reliant on that chemistry.  I mean the plot is almost identical to the first film, but it has to be said in a good way.  It just doesn't feel like any effort has gone into it.

Also the bad guy (or gal or alien or whatever) is pretty lacklustre and she has a sidekick who I think was meant to provide some comic relief, but actually didn't do anything funny.

Even the characters that recurred from the first film didn't really add anything (well, the worm guys worked quite well).  And as for the love interest for Smith - that was just so half arsed it was almost painful.

I think I'm probably giving the impression I hated the film, but I would say that was too extreme - I just found it all very meh.