The fun is in the believing, and Sonnenfeld makes it easy to do that.
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When you watch a catalog title in Blu-ray for the first time, you have the same kind of apprehension as you do when you walk into a theater to see the latest film starring one of your favorite actors. It was about 10 minutes into "Men in Black" when I realized that I was smiling--because of the characters and situations, sure, but also because "Men in Black" passed the Blu-ray transfer test. This 1997 film looks better than it ever has, with so much grain reduction that you really only notice it in the sky and backgrounds in less than a handful of scenes. And let's face it. The only thing better than watching a good movie is watching that movie in High Definition.
Based on a comic book by Lowell Cunningham (what would filmmakers do without comics?), "Men in Black" is part buddy-cop film, with a veteran training a new partner; part sci-fi film, with Planet Earth facing destruction because a group of insect aliens swiped a walnut-sized galaxy from another race of aliens; and part comedy-satire, with some awfully funny explanations as to why certain people on this planet behave the way they do, or how one of them "left the building."
Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith make a great team in this dramedy that has the two of them trading deadpan sarcastic barbs as often as they spot aliens roaming around Manhattan. You see, Jones plays K, a man whose past was completely erased so he could serve in the most secret of secret government agencies which was formed in the Fifties to "license and track aliens" on the planet. The first aliens came here for the same reason as other immigrants: seeking asylum. Now, we're told, there are 1500 of them on Earth at any given time, mostly in Manhattan. The bulk of them are content to go about their business impersonating humans (Newt Gingrich, Al Roker, and Sly Stallone are among the aliens shown on the agency's visual tracking board), but they have to be monitored to make sure things don't go terribly, terribly wrong. Sometimes they do. Make that frequently they do. That's when the MIB (Men in Black) people take to the streets to fight aliens using alien weapons. The first act is spent learning about this secret agency, which is funded not by Congress or taxes, but by patents from alien inventions they stole--products like Velcro and microwave ovens. All of the gags involving aliens and alien inventions are about as much fun in this film as the prehistoric inventions were in "The Flintstones." Add that to the tongue-in-cheek humor that comes from a strong script and you've got a film that's a cut above the standard save-the-planet fare.
The fun in the early going is watching K search for a new recruit, finally settling on a young NYPD loose cannon named James Edwards (Smith), who will soon be reduced to just J after he joins. In some buddy cop films the banter and the lines are so snappy it's like stars on a talk show interacting with the host. You're aware that the lines were written, they're so clever. I mean, who can think that fast constantly? The dialogue here is subtle enough to be believable, and that makes it all the more fun . . . and funny.
As John J. Puccio noted in his DVD review, Director Barry Sonnenfeld really does a fine job of "juggling the humor, effects, and thrills." It's a tonal high-wire act that really could have resulted in one big flop, but Sonnenfeld pulls it off with the help of a talented cast that "gets it." They all seem to be having a good time while playing it just right. It would have been easy to go too far off the deep end with this one, but Sonnenfeld steadies his cast so that their performances never make us feel as if we're watching a film adaptation of a comic book. Everyone is so spot-on that you start to believe that there might be aliens living among us, and that these MIB guys have maybe zapped more than a few of us with a flashing red light thingy that clears a person's memory so they have no knowledge of any encounter with aliens. It's like, "Clean-up in aisle four," and these MIB people are right on the site, ready to wipe everyone's slate clean while J and K pursue the bad guys, with the help (interference?) of the local coroner (Linda Fiorentino).
The plot here is simple: an insect assassin (D'Onofrio) lands on Earth illegally (not entering via airport terminal, the way the others do), whacks a farmer, borrows his skin, and ends up cruising around Manhattan in a pest control truck, looking to kill an alien royal and take the galaxy-in-a-nutshell in an act that could mean intergalactic war. But J and K's problems are more pressing. The Arquillians are approaching in a giant spaceship and have given the standard galactic week (one Earth hour) for the MIB to produce that galaxy or else they'll destroy the planet. Happens all the time, K tells J, who finds it all so hard to believe. But as they go about their Intergalactic business, it starts to get more believable scene by scene. That's one of the chief strengths of "Men in Black": it gets stronger as you go along. It's one of those films that doesn't just hold up over time--it gets better.
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[release]23517[/release]