RECENT WATCHES: Men in Black: International (2019)

Immediately after “Men in Black 3” was designated a success, Sony went to work on a fourth movie. Initially, there was some brief suggestions that Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones may return to their iconic roles. Yet their massive salaries, and probably their massive egos too, soon made it clear that wasn't going to happen. Sony, desperate to hang onto a profitable I.P., started to toss around multiple ideas to extend this franchise without its leading men. After a gonzo crossover with the “21 Jump Street” series fell through, Sony instead moved forward with a spin-off. “Men in Black International” would focus on other corners of the “MIB” universe and star brand new characters. This was a good idea but, as too often happens in Hollywood, good ideas only go so far. 

When she was a child, a strange creature sneaked into the home of Molly Wright. While a group of mysterious men in black suits appeared to wipe her parents' memories, Molly escaped detection. Twenty years later, she's become obsessed with aliens and the secret organization that polices them. Molly finds MIB headquarters and sneaks inside. After a long talk with O, she is designated a probationary agent and assigned to the London office. There, she is partnered with H, an agent that previously saved the world but has since fallen on hard times. The two are given a standard mission to babysit a diplomat. When he's assassinated by an insidious alien threat, M and H uncover a conspiracy within MIB itself. 

Like I said, “Men in Black International” had a good idea. The “Men in Black” films always implied a bigger universe. Moving the story outside New York, to MIB's other operations around the globe, is a solid premise for a spin-off. Yet “International” is not nearly that clever in execution. The best idea the script has is to take the buddy cop premise of the original and switch it around. Now the rookie, Tessa Thompson's M, is the by-the-book straight man while the veteran, Chris Hemsworth's H, is the devil-may-care wildcard. The nature of the story means H goes from being an unlikable cad to a responsible hero... Which, in execution, just means he's an annoying dumb-ass for most of the movie. 

This shackles Chris Hemsworth's incredible charm and comedic ability to a lame-ass character. Then again, even a talented performer can only do so much with dire material. “Men in Black International” is an astonishingly unfunny comedy. None of the jokes land. All the gags are characters making snide, canned comments about what's happening around them. Tessa Thompson, another likable performer who had good chemistry with Hemsworth in “Thor: Ragnorok,” is forced to play straight woman to a bunch of lifeless jokes. The film's hopeless comedic impulses are best summed up by Pawny. That's an tiny alien that M adopts after his queen is killed. Voiced by Kumail Nunjani at his most obnoxiously snarky, the character exist solely to make the most limp and joyless quibs. 

Yet even this is not what bugs me the most about “Men in Black International.” What really pisses me off is the complete lack of creativity on display here. The previous “Men in Black” movies, even the CGI-heavy third one, were characterized by imaginative creature effects. In “International,” all the aliens are really boring looking. Several of them look just like humans but with extra limbs or eyes. Even the more exotic entities have a humanoid shape, with two arms and two legs and upright postures. In a sci-fi world where aliens can literally look like anything – in a franchise where aliens are known to have divergent appearances – why would you make them all resemble people so much? The grand threat of the film is two man-shaped clouds that just look like regular guys for most of the run time. Even the traditional "Men in Black" scene in the finale, where the bad guy unfurls into an elaborate alien form, is little more than twitching tentacles and spiky skin. It's so painfully boring.

The completely lame aliens are really just a wider symptom of “Men in Black International's” anemic imagination. None of the far-out cosmic ideas that characterized the previous “Men in Black” films, even the bad second one, are present here. The MacGuffin is a gun powered by a miniature supernova, which is kind of cool. Otherwise, the movie's ideas are hopelessly mediocre. An alien race based on chess – an Earthly board game – or a race of shapeshifters in a franchise were extraterrestrials can already look like people is the best the writers could come up with. None of the action scenes are memorable. For all the gadgetry at the MIB's disposals, a succession of larger guns is the best “International” can imagine. A hover-bike chase is forgettable. The movie even degrades into fist fights at one point. The plot veers towards a twist that is obvious from the film's early minutes. 

If “Men in Black International” feels like a made-by-committee product designed to appeal to as many people as possible via overwhelming blandness, that's because it basically was. Director F. Gary Gray – marking the second time he's directed a sequel to a Barry Sonnenfeld movie – frequently feuded with producer Walter F. Parkes. Parkes, not Gray, had final cut on the movie and apparently even directed several days on it. The script was so heavily rewritten during production that Hemsworth and Thompson eventually stopped learning their lines. No wonder this movie ended up being a massive mediocrity. The “Men in Black” franchise will probably be rebooted eventually, as it's too well and has made too much money to be shelved forever. Yet it's no surprise that this lame duck follow-up was a non-starter. And we didn't even get a dumb-ass theme song out of it! [4/10]