Tuesday, August 06, 2002

Will Smith is the new black: Men in Black II

Same planet, new scum? Based on an idea by Lowell Cunningham, MIIB (as I'm ridiculously supposed to abbreviate it), this is a perfect, entertaining, funny, comic-book of a movie. It's not rocket science, it's the regular "they tried to kill us, we won, let's make a sequel" plot, but beautifully told and brilliantly observed, in a slightly kids-market way. Will and Tommy (who is currently "decommissioned" as a postal worker; "just about everyone who works in the post office is an alien") are trying to save the planet again, and there's sparkling special effects, sizzling repartee and laughs a plenty. The aliens, ably led by Lara Flyn Boyle in her biker-chic best are looking for The Light of Zarthan, which appears to have arrived in 1978 in a hand-carved wooden box remarkably similar to the one my grandparents bought on holiday in Lanzarote and kept cigarettes in.

I won't give the plot away - does she get the light and destroy the planet? do they win? it'll be a huge surprise - but I can't recommend this film enough if you want an evening of light-hearted entertainment, an excellent script (sample: customs clerk to alien: "only go out at night, and if you have to go out in the day, only in the East Village), and references a plenty to genres of yesteryear - crap seventies badly made sci-fi, superman, Starsky and Hutch, even maybe - then this is for you.

Girly ephemera:I once read, but can't find it anywhere, that Michelle Pfeiffer is the perfect woman because of the symmetry of her face, and is hence the most plastic-surgery-copied. So it's a surprise that, in this 10/10 world, both female leads are slightly out-of-kilter: Lara Flyn Boyle looks fabulously Gone with the Wind in her make-up, but her mouth is definitely not even, while Rosario Dawson is undoubtedly beautiful, but has uneven nostrils. You may ask how I am trained to notice even the slightest imperfection in others; and I say, years' of practice in having my own pointed out to me.

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