Men in Black: International, the fourth film in the 22-year-old franchise, had two hurdles to clear.
First, it had to prove that an MIB film could work without Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, which is a daunting prospect, and it had to show that the MIB universe could tell a story centered around something other than your garden-variety, end-of-the-world, alien-invasion premise.
Let’s just say this installment doesn’t clear either bar, although I don’t necessarily think we should pound nails into the coffin just yet.
What MIB: International does do is introduce one character deserving of a future adventure, and that would be Pawny, a pint-sized, hysterical alien footsoldier, voiced perfectly by Kumail Nanjiani.
The other new additions, including Chris Hemsworth’s Agent H (imagine a boozier, goofier James Bond) and Liam Neeson’s Agent High T, the overseer of MIB’s European operation, underwhelm because they are too similar to Smith and Jones in some ways and too bland in others.
Surprisingly, the new character that resonates the least is Molly, aka Agent M (Tessa Thompson), whose girl-power gumption should have delivered a welcome blast of freshness to the franchise and turned the decidedly male alien-policing organization on its ear.
Reuniting her with Hemsworth (she played Valkyrie in Thor: Ragnarok) seemed a no-brainer, and teased some serious on-screen comedic chemistry, but Thompson’s approach is so subdued and muted throughout the film that you expect her to fall asleep at any moment.
Instead of focusing more on Agent M, who meets an alien as a child and avoids being neuralyzed by the responding agents, and playing up her search to prove that MIB is, in fact, a real organization, the film chooses instead to open with yet another testosterone-fueled face-off between Agents H and High T and The Hive, a promising but undeveloped alien adversary.
And, once she’s introduced, Thompson’s ascent to probationary Agent M moves so lightning-quick that it undermines the necessary character development to form a proper bond with the audience. It doesn’t help that she’s treated as Hemsworth’s lackey for much of the story instead of as his equal.
Men in Black: International also strains to remind fans of its earlier, better installments with subtle Easter eggs, blatant cameos by popular aliens like Frank the Pug and even an artistic rendering of the final bug battle from the first film.
None of this does anything to make Men in Black: International a good, or even enjoyable, movie.
The exotic locales promised by its title fail to generate any excitement. There’s a promising story mentioned about how the Eiffel Tower in Paris was the first point of contact for alien encounters, but that’s quickly discarded. And while a large chunk of the second act is set in Marrakesh, the majority of the action is limited to an open-air market that looks like an unused set from Raiders of the Lost Ark.
There’s not even a main villain introduced until the last 20 minutes, and the dual alien mercenaries presented early on as the big bad guys add up to little more than an excuse to showcase the dynamic flexibility and gyrations of Les Twins, the French brothers who won the first season of World of Dance.
So, who’s to blame? That’s hard to say.
Director F. Gary Gray is complicit, if nothing else, in the film’s failings. Why he was picked to helm this blockbuster is a mystery, given his inconsistency behind the camera. On the one hand, he can deliver a phenomenal showstopper like 2015’s Straight Outta Compton, which should have been nominated for Best Picture. But his resume is also marked by lackluster sequels to far better films, including 2005’s Be Cool and 2017’s The Fate of the Furious.
Writers Art Marcum and Matt Holloway also deserve some heat. While they’re both credited for helping draft Iron Man (with four other writers), they had a hand in scripting Punisher: War Zone and Transformers: The Last Knight, two boneheaded and bombastic flicks that never should have been made.
Here’s the deal: If you loved the first three Men in Black films, you will probably enjoy a decent amount of International. It’s lightweight and kind of fun, and there are far worse ways to waste two hours.
But if you’re like me, and you’re tired of Hollywood simply recycling the same tired plots and the same bland hero archetypes, you’ll likely be pissed off once the credits roll.
When the best thing about your movie is a tiny avocado-sized computer-generated alien talking mad smack to Thor, that’s a huge problem. Yes, Pawny is super cute, and kids and adults alike will love him, but it takes more than that to make a wholly enjoyable alien action-comedy.
The universe is a big fucking space. You would think someone could come up with an original idea that centers around something a little more fantastic than yet another McGuffin that threatens to destroy existence as we know it.
John W. Allman has spent more than 25 years as a professional journalist and writer, but he’s loved movies his entire life. Good movies, awful movies, movies that are so gloriously bad you can’t help but champion them. Since 2009, he has cultivated a review column and now a website dedicated to the genre films that often get overlooked and interviews with cult cinema favorites like George A. Romero, Bruce Campbell and Dee Wallace. Contact him at Blood Violence and Babes.com, on Facebook @BloodViolenceBabes or on Twitter @BVB_reviews.
This article appears in Jun 13-20, 2019.