It was 1967 and I was working at the Latin American Forecast Center, Charleston AFB, South Carolina. One morning, when I was arriving at work for a day shift, I found a new circular from HQUSAF on the detachment bulletin board. The circular, sent to all major commands, alerted us to the existence of the “Men In Black”, individuals who would show up — often before official representatives of the military arrived — at the homes of individuals who had reported sighting a UFO (or “flying saucer”, as they were sometimes still known), interrogate the individual concerned, and then warn him or her to speak to no one else of the sighting, even the military. HQUSAF purportedly had no idea who the MIBs were, but seemed to be pretty pissed off about them, and ordered those of us serving in the military to immediately report contacts with these individuals.

I kid you not.

It took thirty years for the MIBs to become movie fodder. Now, despite what I suspect were not all that great returns from the original film, there is a sequel. In some ways, it reminds me of RoboCop II and Jurassic Park II. In some ways, it doesn’t. More about that later, though.

The premise of the movies: There are aliens among us. Mostly, these aliens live in the shadows and mind their own business, coming out occasionally to run a pizza joint or, perhaps, go to a movie. Some of them are criminal types; so we have a supersecret government organization that exists to regulate the comings and goings of these aliens, and make sure that they don’t bother normal people (who, through the use of a “neuralizer”, are kept blissfully unaware of their existence, even when one shows up and eats the larger part of a subway train in New York). The members of this organization wear black suits and special RayBans, and have traded in their names for letters. The organization is run by “Zed” (Rip Torn) and, historically, its top agent is “Kay” (Tommy Lee Jones), who, however, has been neuralized and retired and is now Kevin Brown, the postmaster of Truro, MA; he has been replaced by his young protegé “Jay” (Will Smith), once but never again James Edwards. “Jay” is not good at keeping partners, however; if agency names came from Unicode, he would be out of ASCII and well into European Extended-A by now. His current temporary partner is Frank, an alien who looks remarkably like a small pug dog.

When a monstrous alien who looks like a Victoria’s Secret ad (Lara Flynn Boyle) comes to town hunting for the key to the conquest of a distant planet — a key that, should it actually be on earth, will likely destroy it — “Kay” must be called out of retirement, and he and “Jay” have to solve the problem by themselves (the alien Serleena having captured MIB headquarters). Which, of course, they do.

One difference between this film and the two I mentioned above is that this film has a plot, while they did not (at least as far as I could tell). ⁽¹⁾ Another difference is that, while the other two might have been better if they had had plots, this one might have been better without one.

The story is trite, the acting lackadaisical; both Jones and Smith have done better, both know it, both go through the film looking wooden, as though they were struggling to hold in their bowel contents or perhaps simple moans and groans. I was sort of expecting this, because whoever put the TV trailer together did not manage to keep it off the small screen.

There are films for which I might say, “I cannot recommend this film too highly.” For this one, I’ll say the same thing, but hold the last two words. It’s living proof, along with RoboCop II and Jurassic Park II, that you shouldn’t make a sequel just for the sake of making a sequel.

(Though if there is a Men In Black III somewhere down the line, we should hold to the thought that RoboCop III and Jurassic Park III, if not up to the originals, were about three cuts above their immediate predecessors. There is hope for the future of this franchise.)

Well, at least there were several good previews (The Two Towers, Star Trek: Nemesis) and a rather funny cartoon, sort of like we used to have before the feature(s) when I was a kid.

⁽¹⁾ Since writing this, I’ve seen a TV version of Jurassic Park II which seems to have had half an hour or so of material restored to it, and found that it made much more sense than the version I saw on the wide screen.