Men in Black trilogy

Today marks the 20^th Anniversary of the one of the greatest sci-fi comedies ever made. Today, I will do a review on the trilogy, which happens to be one of my favorite sci-fi comedy trilogies ever made. Let’s jump right in to the first installment, “Men in Black,” released in 1997.

There is a moment in the movie when a serious government worker shows a video screen of “every alien on Earth.” We’re not really surprised to see some of the faces on screen: Sylvester Stallone, Al Roker, Newt Gingrich, and Dionne Warwick. (Ebert said in his review, “When the movie comes out on video, I'll use freeze frames to capture the rest.”) Funny little side jokes like that are the heart and soul of “Men in Black” (Ebert noted, “or "MiB," as it is already being called, no doubt in the movie title-as-software tradition of "ID4"”).

Ebert noted, “A lot of big-budget special-effects films are a hair this side of self-parody and don't know it.” “Men in Black” knows it and enjoys it. It’s an enjoyable Bronx look aimed at movies that think $100 million budgets are seriousness. Ebert mentioned, “This is not a film about superheroes, but the adventures of a couple of hard-working functionaries whose assignment is to keep tabs on the sizable alien population of the United States.”

Tommy Lee Jones, never more serious, not smiling and businesslike, stars as K, the veteran agent of Division 6, whose members dress, as Ebert puts it, “William Morris agents used to,” in black suits and black ties. The agency is under the command of Zed (Rip Torn), who gets really serious at the latest threat to Earth’s independence and tasks K a young rookie code-named J (Will Smith).

Their main threat comes along when a flying saucer hits the truck of a hillbilly named Edgar, played Vincent D’Onofrio, and the alien inside takes his body, not really comfortably. Ebert describes, “Imagine Orson Welles in a suit of armor and you will have a rough approximation of how easily the Edgar-alien inhabits his skin.”

The recurring joke in the movie is that almost anyone could be an alien. The film starts on the Mexican border, where Jones pulls over a group of officers (Fredric Lehne, Steve Rankin, Andy Prosky, Stephanie Paliferro and Robert Stahoviak) who have caught some illegal immigrants and picks out the one who is really an alien: a fantastical, blobby bug-eyed alien with a realistic human face mask (John Alexander).

The special effects are by Industrial Light and Magic, and the aliens are by Rick Baker, perhaps Hollywood’s greatest monster creator. Here he goes completely nuts. Instead of being told to make one alien race, he’s been told to create an entire galaxy race, and every one is a new surprise. Ebert made a funny remark saying, “There were times I thought we were seeing the new seven dwarfs: Slimy, Gooey, Icky, Creepy, Sticky, Barfy and Pox.”

The story (Ebert said, “If there can be said to be one, and if I understood it”) tells of a plan by "Edgar" to somehow use a captured galaxy to take over Earth.

Ebert said, “Although aliens would presumably be more advanced than we laggards on Earth, many of these aliens seem to have advanced only to the approximate level of the Three Stooges and are vanquished by a series of bizarre weapons employed by J and K (you may have seen the previews: "Any idea how to use this?" "None whatsoever.").”

Ebert goes on to say, “Linda Fiorentino, still looking for the right role to follow her triumph in "The Last Seduction," hasn't found it here - but her hard-bitten coroner will do nicely as an intermediate step.”

The movie makes good use of a lot of New York landmarks (there’s a chase through the Guggenheim, a flying saucer lands in She Stadium, and another one has been disguised as an exhibit at the 1964 World’s Fair.) Director Barry Sonnenfeld shows the happy devotion in the movie’s first hour or so to completely break away from all rules of boring storytelling and simply let the story have some laughs and insanities. Ebert noted, “Writer Ed Solomon, who on the basis of this irreverent screenplay could probably play all three of the critics on "MST3," deflates one sci-fi pomposity after another.”

When the story finally does settle in, it slows down the flight a little, but not seriously.

“Men in Black” goes on in that summer’s tradition, which had “Con Air” and “Batman and Robin” of big-budget action movies that at least had the humor to know how silly they were.

If you haven’t seen this movie, you should, it’s one of my favorite sci-fi comedies ever. Especially with the classic Will Smith line, “You know what’s the difference between you and me? I make this look good!” That is one of the funniest lines ever.

We’re not done here, because we are going to look at the sequel, “Men in Black 2,” released in 2002.

Barry Sonnenfeld’s long-awaited sequel to his 1997 sci-fi comedy blockbuster “Men in Black” for some reason got bad reviews for being “more of the same.” I agree with John R. McEwen when he said, “I'm not sure what the critics are expecting—Men In Black II is more of the same, and that's why it's so entertaining. Reuniting Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, one of the best onscreen duos since Matthau & Lemmon, MIBII does retrace some steps through New York City's alien crime community, but it introduces enough new material to be worth the ticket price, and features a rather amusing role reversal between the two agents, with Agent J (Smith) showing the former Agent K (Jones) around the halls of the top-secret MIB facility after K had his memory erased at the end of the first film.” Director Sonnenfeld, who spent the 1980s as a cinematographer and then suddenly changed to directing in 1991, has had his share of hits and misses, but soon slowly gains the silly tone for a worthy continuation of the established MIB story.

Written by Robert Gordon and Barry Fanaro, based on the comic book story by Lowell Cunningham, the story is about an evil, wormy alien called Serleena who comes to Earth (in disguise as the hot model Lara Flynn Boyle) and, with the help of a two-headed goofball named Scrad (Johnny Knoxville, playing both heads), tries to find the mysterious Light of Zartha, which will apparently give her power over the entire universe. As soon as she arrives, MIB chief Zed sees they’ll have to call back Agent K out of retirement because he’s the only one who knows where the Light is. K’s former partner J, who has been having trouble finding a new partner anyway, must drive to a rural town in Massachusetts (where K works as a postman) and convince him to come back to his previous job. Let’s not forget restore his entire memory.

McEwen said, “What made Men In Black work was the exquisite partnership of its two leads, along with a nice mix of cool effects and a multitude of memorable alien characters, created with every medium from rubber masks to puppetry to computer graphics. The fact that Sonnenfeld has chosen not to mess with a good thing doesn't necessarily mean he's out of ideas, but the formula can't sustain itself indefinitely.” Some of the new additions of this film are the replacement of the female character the hot Linda Fiorentino (who apparently won her MIB role from director Sonnenfeld in a poker game – maybe she lost this time) with the fresh-looking Rosario Dawson, and some surprising cameos from Chef Martha Stewart, the late Michael Jackson and Sonnenfeld himself. Also is Patrick Warburton in a short but hilarious role as J’s previous partner, T. Returning from the first film are Tony Shalhoub as the rough pawn shop owner who looks to have an unlimited amount of regenerating heads, and Frank the Dog (voiced by Tim Blaney), whose role has been really grown for the sequel.

McEwen said, “Smith and Jones perform together as smoothly as if they never left the studio, and the script sparkles with very much the same fluorescence.” Boyle is not a good villain compared to D’Onofrio. McEwen noted, “she basically plays the same character she plays on The Practice, except she's traded in the severe ponytail for a full mane of wavy black hair—and she has thousands of worms coming out of her. Oh, wait, she does have that on The Practice.” While the film’s ending doesn’t really hint there will be another sequel, it definitely doesn’t consider that, either. McEwen noted, “I imagine the answer to that will be determined by that most venerated of Hollywood formulas, the cha-ching factor.”

I know that people didn’t like this sequel, but I don’t think it’s as bad as everyone said it is. My siblings saw this in theaters with a couple of our cousins, and my siblings agreed that we weren’t annoyed by it and didn’t think it was bad. I personally think this was a good sequel, and definitely one of my favorite sequels. It might even be better than the first one, in my opinion. Definitely check this one out and give it a chance.

Much to everyone’s surprise, they came out with “Men in Black 3,” released in 2012. This comes 15 years after the entertaining original and 10 years after the wrongfully hated sequel, and the surprise is that it’s probably the best of them. Seeing how much time has passed, the entire idea may be new to some people watching this, but it still does work: There is a secret agency tasked to keeping track of every alien on Earth, and there are as many of them as makeup artist Rick Baker can think of. Ebert said, “I am not sure how undercover an MiB agent can be when he dresses exactly like the Blues Brothers, but never mind, they get the job done.”

The story until now: Veteran Agent K and his younger partner Agent J are under the command of Agent O, played by Emma Thompson, when there’s an emergency. The horrendously ugly alien Boris the Animal, played by Jemaine Clement, has escaped from a maximum security prison on the moon. He is the last surviving member of his people, still angry because Agent K shot off one of his arms. His plan: Travel back in time and kill Agent K before that can happen.

An arm like his, you don’t want shot off. Ebert noted, “Its palm apparently serves as a condo for a nasty little insectoid creature that will leap and take chunks out of you. Indeed, Boris is one of those aliens whose entire body seems to contain openings from which unappetizing things can forage on its victims.”

Time travel can become really difficult. To make it easy: Agent J tries to travel back in time to stop Boris the Animal from killing K. This happens as Young K alive in the same time period as J, who is the same age he started as, so the old man and the rookie are now equals.

How this works is the movie’s most impressive success. Young Agent K is played, not by Tommy Lee Jones in prosthetic makeup, but by Josh Brolin. The casting is done perfectly. He looks like a young Tommy Lee Jones, and Brolin imitates Jones so perfectly that director Barry Sonnenfeld, hearing him, supposedly cried from relief. Ebert admitted, “While watching the movie, I was convinced Jones dubbed his own voice.” Remember that Brolin also sound just like former President George W. Bush in “W.”

Ebert said, “Anyway, Agent J travels back to save Agent K, and not content to populate the film with countless gob-smacking aliens from Rick Baker's fertile imagination, Sonnenfeld and his writer, Etan Cohen, also show a Hitchcockian flair for using ironic locations. For reasons I don't understand, in order to return to the "present," it's necessary to fall from a very great height and push a button on a gizmo at the last second. This involves Agent J crawling out on one of those medieval-looking eagles atop the Chrysler building, something you can imagine Hitch assigning Cary Grant to do.”

A skillful final scene takes place at Cape Kennedy on the day of the first moon landing attempt. Another gadget must be put on the moon to save the Earth, and this has a last-minute try to jump on the Apollo 11 pilot seat, insert the gadget and escape using one of the eject seats given for the astronauts in case of an emergency. Since the first moon launch was televised with many TV cameras and examined by endless binoculars, it looks unlikely this would have gone unnoticed. Ebert said, “Maybe there's a loophole — like if the attempt succeeds, it changes the future and turns out to be unnecessary.”

Who cares? The movie gets comic relief from a sidekick character named Griffin, played by Michael Stuhlbarg, who wears a knitted Elmer Fudd hat and has the ability to see all the different variations resulting from any event during time travel. “Uh, oh,” he’s always saying, “this is the one where…”

Ebert ended his review by saying, “Let me say that although I liked the first “MiB” movie, I wasn't particularly looking forward to this belated sequel. But I had fun. It has an ingenious plot, bizarre monsters, audacious cliff-hanging, and you know what? A closing scene that adds a new and sort of touching dimension to the characters of J and K.”

In the end, I personally think that each installment got better and better. The first one was all about J, the second was about K, and this one has a “Back to the Future” feel to it which made J and K’s partnership grow closer as friends. This is another one of those great “Buddy Cop” movies that you should check out. Like the last two, this is another one of my favorites. If you saw the previous two, definitely see this one. My siblings saw the first one in theaters since I wasn’t old enough to go watch it, but we own it on VHS, so I took two of my younger cousins to see the third one. My siblings saw this as a rental from the library, and they liked it. This is one of those trilogies that I recommend everyone to watch, because like I already stated, this is one of my favorites.

Alright everyone, thanks for joining in on this long review, stay tuned in two days when I review my “Independence Day Movie.”