Men in Black International

MIBI. MIBI Not.
or
"...Some Next-Level Shit Going On"

The economics of the "Men in Black" series required some sort of re-boot; if they'd gone with previous stars, they'd have had to save on a cosmically scoped series by restricting their location work to Will Smith's voluminous trailer.

Besides, the series needed it. The "Men in Black" organization in the previous three films had a galaxy-wide perspective, but we never got to know anybody but the two leads, that film's chief antagonist, and the organization's leader, which it it feel like director Barry Sonnenfeld's perspective-warping visual-joke-tags. It was seriously about time to expand the series' event horizons and give it a little breadth. That they've done with Men in Black International by introducing a new recruit. Call her Molly (the charming Tessa Thompson), but she's agent M in MIB (Do they have only 26 agents?? Then they can't even get a decent group-rate insurance discount!), whose encounter with an alien (and the actions of the MIB organization during it) inspires her to become an agent with the super-secret agency as an adult. She's farmed out—by MIB head O (Emma Thompson, the only past cast to return—at least they're keeping the best)—to the foreign exchange to learn the ropes of alien wrangling and memory wiping.

O sends her to the London office where she meets former agent T (Liam Neeson) who has become the head of the department—he's now referred to as High-T (so precious).** He pairs her with Agent H (Chris Hemsworth), his former partner on a Paris mission to intercept and neutralize a group of aliens called "The Hive." H is well-regarded in the organization, but he is a kind of a Bondish Man in Black with a sloppy work ethic and walks around like he's coated in black teflon.  

The plot—such as it is—involves a version of the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, who, with his dying exhalation entrusts M with a cosmic McGuffin that can be transformed into a powerful weapon capable of creating a Grand Canyon in any state without benefit of a a large river and millions of years. There could be details detailed that would expand the synopsis, but, they're exceptionally un-clever and we've seen them before. Aliens invade, assume human form, are looking for something with a power far greater than its tiny size would indicate, and...oh, yes, they're helped by an alien who has suffered at the hands of the invaders. This isn't writing, this is word-processing and the Ctrl, C, and V keys are getting a bit worn.

And that's it. This is going to be a very short review for a movie that doesn't deserve any more scrutiny, merely due to its lack of effort. Hemsworth and Thompson were delightful together in Thor: Ragnarok and they are not throughout this one, although Thompson tries mightily hard. They just don't seem to mesh, probably because Hemsworth's H isn't hamstrung and is allowed to lord it over the obviously more competent M, which rankles and flies in the face of what worked in the Marvel film. 

Or, it just might be that that film's director, Taiki Waititi, had a better sense of how to keep the two actors bouncing off each other, than this film's F. Gary Gray** does (although his work here is a fair imitation of Sonnenfeld's loopy roller-coaster ride that threatens to go off the rails at any second) and that seems to extend to the rest of the cast, including Rebecca Ferguson, who's great in the "Mission: Impossible" films, but is utterly charmless here.

Capitalizing on past glories in MIBI

In a Universe of ideas and the expectation that science-fiction might go somewhere where no writer has gone before, why would anyone settle for this re-tread that doesn't even try hard to do something new or think a little differently. Geez, they couldn't even try to do a compare and contrast with the American version, the film being based in Europe and all? But, no, that might be doing something beyond anyone's scope, micro-or tele. Hey, guys, maybe bring back Linda Fiorentino's Agent L from the first movie? I mean...anything?

I don't think the franchise could stand another one like this: been there, zapped that.

Ya really didn't like it, huh?

* Hey, maybe they could do a cross-over with Taken, and this time, his daughter could be abducted by aliens—c'mon, it's as believable as the LAST one.

** Gray tried to leave the project, supposedly, as the film suffered from Studio "regime-Change" confusion, and its producer Walter Parkes re-wrote the script that Thompson and Hemsworth signed up for, and he even directed parts of it. Geez, maybe the next movie should have a race of incompetent aliens trying make sense of an invasion plot when their leader dies.

Just look here and let's forget it ever happened.