Men in Black International

I didn’t even want to see Men in Black International. What I wanted to watch was this Chinese children’s movie named Fantastica: A Boonie Bears Adventure because it looks to be the cinematic equivalent of a lead pipe to the temple. Repeatedly, and in the best way possible, the way where after a while you’re no longer sure if you’re in pain or dead, crosseyed or just on a bad acid trip. Like the time this kid Garrett who used to hang out near the cardboard compacter behind the Walmart, and who I thought hated me because of the way he threw rocks at me until this time he gave me a tab and swore it’s even better if you take it with a cup of Red Devil Lye. I thought my intestines were a rainbow that was burning me from the inside and that I needed to get it out and back into the sky where it belonged. I woke up twelve hours later in the crawlspace with a raccoon beneath my neighbor’s porch, drenched in vomit, blood and stringy strips of innards. Mostly my own, I think.

I miss Garrett. I hope nobody’s bullying him in juvey.

Anyway, my point is you should check out the trailer for Fantastica (trailer link), then rewatch it sixty times. It’ll be a shitload better use of your time than watching the drab spectacle of Men in Black International. This is the Olive Garden catered to your office Christmas party of movies: Bland, mushy shit engineered up by corporate humpers more interested in offending nobody than pleasing anybody. It’s tomato sauce with no pepper, rubbery mozzarella and spongy breadsticks served up in disposable trays.

The MIB series started 22 years ago with a movie that was actually original and decent. It was a comedy about aliens hiding in plain sight and the secret force that dealt with them. That was a fine premise for jokes, visual gags and Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones to act as deadpan secret agents with cool weapons and the ability to erase the memory of any civilian who might have seen something they shouldn’t have.

The original plot played into what most of us believe: That secret forces keep us from seeing what’s really going on. I’ve always believed there has to be a way more interesting world just out of sight, kept away from us normal people. The problem is, the premise had diminishing returns. By the third MIB movie, the novelty was worn down to nubs, like the fingers of a sander in a furniture factory. International is the fourth in the series. It feels like complimenting the host at a dinner party for her mashed potatoes, so she serves them to you four more times.

Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson play the new agents, named H and M, tasked with preventing universal warfare. Hemsworth is the dashing loose cannon, always ready with smug quips that absolutely nobody in the audience laughed at. Most likely because they were lazy and lame. That’s the reason people usually give me for not laughing at my bon mots. M is the wide-eyed and ambitious newbie who weasels her way into being a Man in Black based purely on gumption. And after one week of training, she’s ready to take on the world! And, as the movie takes great pains to point out, every bit the equal of a man. Caution: Patronizing, feckless Hollywood turd-toddlers at work. Their strident efforts to us how equal women strip M of any opportunity to be interesting. All the character is is an equally dull pile of shit.

Apparently, there are only 26 agents in the gigantic international MIB organization because we never meet anyone with more than a single letter name, like H2 or C3. Or, do agents get named like rows in parking lots? Meet HH and CCC.

H and M get a bunch of fancy guns and a fuckload of black Lexuses. The Lexus thing is fucking obnoxious, but I guess Hollywood’s grassfuckers wanted to tell us two things: One that they’ll sell their souls faster than sno-cones in hell, and two that the Men in Black are a lot like middle-aged Republican dentists. Which they seem to be. No matter how much cool the MIB had in 1997, it’s all squandered now. This movie is as clueless and clapped out as a guy outside a 7-Eleven vaping and shouting “Don’t hate the player, hate the game” at women bringing their kids in for Slurpees.

H and M are tasked with protecting an interplanetary dignitary in possession of a weapon that can destroy entire planets. They fail and let the alien gets killed by dreadlocked, crunking aliens.
But before their ward dies, he gives the device to M, claiming he no longer thinks he can trust H.

This sets up the main pot about there being a mole in the MIB, someone who wants the weapon and is pulling strings to get it. H and M must figure out who. Maybe this could be interesting, but I doubt it. Especially since we essentially introduced to only two possible suspects. One is the upright boss who is H’s mentor, played by Liam Neeson and. The other is the strict and seemingly mean colleague who thinks H. Put on your Encyclopedia Brown sneakers and try to guess which one a shitty screenwriter would make the bad guy…

You guessed right! Hell, everybody guessed right, and the story has no suspense. It barely even tries. Neither does it have tension. H and M bounce between Marrakesh, the desert, a villain’s island hideout, Paris and London. In none of them do we get a unique or interesting view of the locale. These are just drab set pieces with a few special effects and a few mediocre aliens. The agents add a sidekick, a tiny, ugly green alien voiced by Kumail Nanjiani. He’s a funny guy; his character isn’t. It plays like a cheap alarm clock with his tepid one-liners just a tinny ring on a set schedule to express generic cowardice, contempt or surprise. The lowest of lows is a scene that has Nanjiani serving as middleman when H and M feud and won’t speak to each other. What the fuck, did the moviemakers get their ideas from old episodes of Brady Bunch?

Further proof of the lack of imagination at work is that MIB International features not one, but two fights in which the special weapon skitters across the floor and the brawlers scramble for it. What really drags the movie down most, though, is just how God damn flat it all is. There are no highs and no lows. There are no new ideas that would suggest this is a world that needs more exploring, which is what the grassfuckers want. They want a new franchise, but not do the work to justify it

This is just a lot of people involved doing journeyman work, keeping things moving, like the so-called chefs in an Olive Garden kitchen, shoving shit into microwaves, boiling noodles in unsalted pots, watching prefab dough rise, and portioning out low-grade chicken cutlets and meatballs. All to a price, and all consistent and safe. Nothing spicy, nothing new.

Two Fingers for Men in Black International. And fuck shitty Italian. Finally, Garrett, I hope you’re doing well. Nobody throws rocks like you. Boonie Bears: Good bless you and your weird fucking, cheap-looking movie.