Men In Black International

At this point, the “Men in Black” franchise stands as a demonstration that some ideas that make a highly successful first film cannot really carry a whole bunch of sequels. None of the follow up films have really recaptured the charming strangeness of Barry Sonnenfield’s first film – they’ve all fallen into farfetched sequel shenanigans, negating the end of previous films and, in this case, recasting to see whether it plays any better if you strip off most the backstory. And … it doesn’t, really. The plot is no great shakes – it’s the usual “someone wants a superweapon, two heroes from a secret agency want to stop them” shenanigans. This time the main duo are Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth – Thompson fares slightly better in having an actual character to play beyond “physically attractive”, but neither are really being used at their best. It also doesn’t have much of an idea what to do with Liam Neeson, Rory Kinnear or Emma Thompson (Emma and Tessa have one scene where they have amusing byplay, but it’s forgotten pretty quickly). Oh, there’s creatures, there’s exotic locales, there’s gadgetry all over the place … but there’s no whimsy, no strangeness, no fun. This is a film going through the motions, and it’s dull.