Higher Dimensions Of Being!

Men In Black is a franchise that really shouldn't exist.

I've been thinking about this for a while, now. I think I'm right.

The first film was good, don't get me wrong. It was 1997, and Men In Black was something new and different. It was charming and entertaining. Not exactly highbrow entertainment, but certainly a good time.

The concept of a covert government agency working behind the scenes to keep the existence of extraterrestrials living among us wasn't a mind-blowing revelation. This conceit has been used by a multitude of motion pictures, but nobody had ever told the story from the perspective of the covert government agency. The "men in black" had always been portrayed as antagonists, the bad guys.

Nice dildo.

But Men In Black gave us a new spin on things. It was refreshing. And it should have remained a standalone film experience. I don't want to give the wrong impression, because if done right, a sequel (or series of sequels) could be very effective.

The original Men In Black introduced a new and interesting world, a place where aliens were by and large harmless folks not too different from us who just wanted to come to Earth and have a good time. In this capacity, the Men In Black acted more like an intergalactic immigration agency, paper pushers with cooler gadgets. In the rare instance of a rogue alien coming to our world with cruel intentions, things would get interesting.

The mundane presentation of this exciting premise made all the difference. For Agent J (Will Smith), he's desperately trying to wrap his head around all these amazing revelations, while grizzled veteran Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) is just going through the motions. He's seen it all, and there are no more surprises to be had.

K knows that some terrible threat from beyond the stars is always trying to wipe out all life on Earth, so the events of the first movie don't even get his blood pressure up. He's tired of this merry-go-round, and he wants to get off. So J reluctantly retires his partner, inserting his mind-wiped pal back into the life he had left over thirty years in the past. So K gets his happy ending, and J gets a new partner in Linda Fiorentino (what the hell happened to her, by the way?). Done and done.

Please come back!

I was perfectly happy with this entertaining, shallow motion picture experience. Thumbs up!

Five years later, we were cursed with Men In Black II. And I mean cursed.

This tagline wasn't obvious at all.

This film should stand as an example of how not to make a sequel. Nothing works. Nothing works. Instead of building on the foundations of the previous movie, Men In Black II just spins around in a circle like a dog chasing its tail.

People liked those spindly worm dudes from the last movie, so give them more screentime! Frank the Pug was hilarious, so give him more screentime! Remember that guy in the pawn shop with the regenerating head from Men In Black? Put him in the sequel! Kids love watching Monk's head explode!

Why isn't this asshole the star of Men In Black III?

And bring back Tommy Lee Jones!

Um... why? His story's done. We don't need Agent K for a sequel to Men In Black.

If you want to recreate the dynamic of the first film, just have Agent J recruit a new partner to help save the world. It's been five years, plenty of time for a former neophyte like J to grow into a jaded veteran like his old mentor. Introducing a new partner would give J the opportunity to see the world through the new guy's eyes, allowing him to regain his sense of wonder. Or whatever.

Nobody involved in Men In Black II gave two shits about any of that. They just wanted to make the first film again with Lara Flynn Boyle in Vincent D'Onofrio's role. Because TITS.

And ASS.

I've only seen this movie once, on television maybe 6 years ago, and I don't ever want to see it again. Fuck Men In Black II. Nothing changed. By the end of the shockingly short 88 minute runtime, the status quo had been restored, and I couldn't care less. It was boring. There was no forward momentum, and nothing had been done to enrich the fictional universe introduced in the first film.

Surely there wouldn't be a Men In Black III.

Ten years later, we have a Men In Black III. Because nobody demanded it!

Even the poster looks tired.

Well, not nobody. I'm sure Barry Sonnenfeld was itching for a big hit after working almost exclusively in TV for ten years. And Will Smith hadn't been on the big screen since 2008's execrable Seven Pounds. I'm sure he wanted to be back in the public eye in a big way.

And Tommy Lee Jones? He's just down for whatever.

Tommy Lee Jones: Down For Whatever.

200 million dollars later, Men In Black III has materialized. And I watched it. Men In Black III... is good? Yeah, it's good. I liked it.

I was thoroughly entertained throughout the 90-odd minutes of narrative, never feeling bored, never growing offended at the stupidity I was witnessing. I left the theatre feeling pretty good about the whole experience.

And yet... several hours removed from the screening, this strange feeling came creeping over me. I began to think about the movie. I began to analyze it in my own special way. And under the slightest amount of scrutiny, the entire movie fell apart. It collapsed like a Jenga tower after some schmuck with shaky hands tries to pull the wrong piece.

This movie tricked me. It tricked me.

And it doesn't take thirty minutes or so for it to all come crashing down. I realized that the film was fucked from the opening sequence.

Our movie begins with former Pussycat Doll Nicole Scherzinger, dressed to the nines in a skintight leather dress, entering a maximum security prison with a jiggly cake. The film takes note of this in a close-up shot of the cake as she's walking toward a pair of guards, held oh so close to her breasts, as both the cake and the breasts jiggle in a similar manner.

I appreciated this.

Do you get it? It's sexy and funny!

She's come to visit some dude named Boris, who apparently hasn't had a single visitor in his forty years of incarceration. Now this obviously isn't a regular prison. It's a prison for aliens, manned by dumb, burly men with comically large firearms. Apparently this Boris fella is a real bad dude, chained up in the bowels of the prison like that dragon at Gringott's in the Harry Potter movies.

But he can have visitors? Okay, I'll roll with it.

The guards escort Lady Jello to Boris' cell, and we meet comic genius Jemaine Clement (perhaps the only saving grace of the nightmare that is Gentlemen Broncos), all gussied up with make-up madman Rick Baker's prosthetic sorcery.

Long live the new flesh!

I think Nicole Scherzinger has been writing to Boris in prison for some time, becoming his girlfriend of sorts on the outside. This is not an uncommon practice in the real world, which depresses the hell out of me.

She presents the cake to Boris, and a little insect creature emerges from the frosting, killing the guards with nasty little spikes that it can excrete with the force of a .45 caliber handgun. Then it cuts Boris free and crawls into a creepy little mouth in the palm of his hand.

So this thing belonged to him? Um... sure.

A big prison break sequence ensues, with Boris and his well-endowed lady friend capping fools left and right, before Boris finally blasts through a wall to escape the facility. The prison depressurizes, and it's revealed that all of this is taking place on the moon. The prison is on the moon.

Makes sense, right? Keeping the baddest of the bad aliens incarcerated on the moon, away from society. I'm cool with that.

Nicole Scherzinger nearly gets sucked out, but Boris catches her. Then he lets her go, because she's served her purpose and he doesn't really care about her. So she tumbles out into space, very very dead.

I spent the next 90 minutes missing those tits.

Then Boris takes a big leap out of the ruined prison, landing on the lunar surface, staring at the planet Earth. He then speaks (?) in the airless atmosphere, vowing revenge against Agent K, and the opening title sequence begins.

On the surface, this is an odd and exciting action sequence, and it pulls the viewer into the narrative.

But if you think about this sequence, even for the briefest of moments, it completely falls apart. It doesn't make any sense.

Let's start with Nicole Scherzinger.

Because TITS.

I can't comment on her acting talent, because the film doesn't care about her as anything other than delightful set dressing. She's aces in that department. But her role is nothing more than a plot device.

Boris needs to escape from prison, and the circumstances of his imprisonment prevent him from escaping on his own terms. He needs an outside man. Er, woman. Classic scenario.

She bakes a damn fine cake.

But how does this woman know that Boris even exists? He's a warmongering space monster imprisoned on the moon. The film never implies that Scherzinger's character is anything more than human, herself. And the Men In Black exist to keep the existence of aliens a secret.

So how does she know he exists? And she writes to him? She writes love letters to a space monster imprisoned on the moon? How are these letters getting to him? Isn't anyone in the chain of command wondering how this person knows that space monster Boris is alive and well, in a lunar prison?

Surely some agent would have been dispatched to neuralyze this woman's memories at some point. Right? She's a fucking security risk! She knows this genocidal monster exists, and she's writing lovey dovey letters to the prick! Did this gigantic red flag get lost in the bureaucratic shuffle?

She had his name tattooed across her back, for fuck's sake! Clearly this woman needs psychiatric help.

As for that deadly bug in her cake: where did it come from? How did she find it? Why didn't it kill her at any point before the film began? It allowed her to hide it in a fucking cake on a long trip to the fucking moon?

And how the fuck did she get to the fucking MOON?! Who gave that voyage the stamp of approval?

What was this fucking bug doing on Earth for forty fucking years?! Is there some sort of space monster prison pen pal system? Did the government okay this? How can Boris talk on the surface of the moon?!

None of this makes any fucking sense! And these are the opening moments of the movie!

This fucking movie pisses in the face of critical thought like that kid in Troll 2 pissed on hospitality!

And you don't piss on hospitality.

I had to tighten my belt by one loop so my brain wouldn't feel hunger pains. And this is how the movie begins!

Everything fell apart as soon as I started thinking about it.

I intially thought Josh Brolin was pretty damned good as a young Agent K. But he's not. He does nothing but present an eerily accurate impersonation of Tommy Lee Jones. He adds nothing else to the equation.

Don't judge me, you self-righteous prick!

Agent J is established as a man in his forties, who has been at the job for 15 years, and yet he acts exactly the same as he did in the first movie. It's the same schtick he's been doing since his days as The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Aire, and it's getting fucking old.

He still acts like a rookie. He gets tossed around like a ragdoll and recovers in no time. He never acts like he's getting older. He hasn't matured, emotionally or physically, in 15 years!

Breaking necks and cashing checks.

Even the Lethal Weapon franchise had to illustrate that our beloved Riggs and Murtaugh were getting too old for this shit. Men In Black III doesn't bother with character development. It doesn't care about character development. It doesn't care about anything other than tricking its fucking audience!

Zed, played by Rip Torn (!) in the previous movies, died off-screen, and we're treated to a bizarre funeral that's supposed to be funny. But it isn't. A pixellated likeness of Zed floats overhead while Agent K poorly eulogizes his old boss.

There is no Zed. Only Zuul.

Why is Zed's face pixellated? They couldn't get the rights to Rip Torn's fucking face?!

And he never shows up in the past. Never. He's not even mentioned.

WHY?!

Emma Thompson cameos as Agent O, Zed's replacement. In the past, a young Agent O has the hots for Agent K. They want to slam hams, but they don't, because duty comes first. After Agent J saves the day and comes back to the present, absolutely nothing has changed, even though it should have changed.

During J's adventures in the past, he has a heartfelt conversation with young K about his unrequited love for Agent O. This implies that in the rejiggered present, Agent K might actually pursue a relationship with O. But this doesn't happen.

The fucking status quo is re-established, and that's it.

And wait a moment, if Boris killed Agent K in the past, this means that he was never around to recruit Agent J. So how the fuck was J still an MIB agent in the post-K present? Why does he crave chocolate milk? I'm not even going to get started on the jaw-droppingly stupid inclusion of J's father in the past.

Frank the Pug isn't in the movie. There's a giant black and white portrait of Frank hanging over the bed in J's apartment. In the past, we see a carnival advertisement in the background of one scene touting the inclusion of an amazing talking pug.

He smokes, too!

Did Frank die? I'm sure the dog that played Frank is dead, but couldn't they have just cast another pug for a cameo? Was it Rip Torn's dog? Was he playing hardball with the producers over money, and poor Frank paid the price?

Hey wait, isn't Frank the Pug in that stupid fucking MIB video game that came out a few weeks ago?

Yeah, there he is!

What the fuck?!

I don't get it. I didn't have these problems with the first movie. It didn't self-destruct when I analyzed it. I just watched it a few weeks ago, and it holds up. Still a good time.

Men In Black III tries to recapture the magic of the first film, and it succeeds on a superficial level.

Like I said, I had a good time in the theatre. But in retrospect it just doesn't work. I think this is a textbook case of the "shut off your brain and have a good time" cinematic phenomenon. It tricked me because I allowed it to trick me.

This isn't even a movie. It's a collection of things that happen. It has a blatant disregard for logic and structure. It's pretending to be a motion picture. It's a 200 million dollar advertisement for itself. Men In Black III is nothing more than an animated poster.

Wheee!!!!

If you look too closely, you'll notice that it's just a two-dimensional sheet of printed paper.

I don't know why this movie exists. This movie doesn't know why it exists. It's an existential crisis.

If it becomes self-aware, it will wander the universe like V'Ger in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, seeking the answer to that all-encompassing question: why am I here?

Men In Black III is a clandestine doomsday device. If it comes back in a few centuries seeking its creator, just pray that Captain Kirk is here to save the day.

Twiggy really didn't like this movie.