"Men in Black II" has absolutely no pretensions about what it is: the first film established all anyone needed to know, introducing agents J and K (Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, respectively) as part of the titular clandestine task force assigned to regulating the comings and goings of aliens on Earth.
The original film, a mix of quirky humor, quirkier aliens and all the trappings of a summer blockbuster, was an undisputed hit, making a sequel a foregone conclusion. Reuniting Jones and Smith with director Barry Sonnenfeld, the sequel asserts its anything-goes shtick and milks it for all its pedigree is worth.
{INSERT_RELATED}J, in the years since the first film, has grown despondent as an agent. Burning through unsuitable partners even as his skill at managing Earth-bound aliens increases, J gets caught up in the murder of an alien pizzeria owner, and becomes particularly interested in the crime's only witness, employee Laura (Rosario Dawson).
The trail leads to a tentacled beastie named Serleena (Lara Flynn Boyle), walking the Earth in the form of a Victoria's Secret model. Serleena is after a long-thought-gone alien artifact whose existence could destroy an entire galactic civilization -- and the Earth, if it's not taken away in time. Tracing the mystery back to an old MIB case, J is forced to seek out K, left to a normal life with his memory erased at the end of the first film, and return him to his old self before Serleena finds the hidden artifact.
What follows is hit-or-miss gags of aliens living on Earth as J struggles to restore K's memory and figure out where the elusive object is hidden before it's too late. Sonnenfeld trots out memorable characters from the first film (Frank the Talking Dog and the gaggle of alien worms are prominently featured) while introducing any number of new, Mad magazine-style grotesques (with make-up jobs by the legendary Rick Baker).
Having established a quirky universe (literally) where nothing is what it seems, Sonnenfeld lets Jones and Smith loose in a playground where logic has no place and is sacrificed for the sake of plot convenience; the finale, a slightly dodgy convergence of a handful of plot threads, is proof enough of that. The mandate of the first film, though, is that it's not the destination, it's how you get there, and the sequel takes that to heart: the fate of the world hanging in the balance is just a reason to show things like talking dogs, flying cars, and entire civilizations housed in train station lockers.
"Men in Black II" is the quintessential summer blockbuster: an effervescent, no-calorie sci-fi comedy with all the expected star power, perfunctory romance, winking cameos and even some genuine wit buried in the middle of it. It's a movie that knows what it is, and has no qualms with having a good time doing it.
"Men in Black II" is showing at theaters everywhere.
