Once upon a time, little Molly (Tessa Thompson) saw people in black at work – they set fire to the brains of her parents so that they would forget everything. And since then, the girl began to dream of being in the team of these wonderful people. She grew up, began working in a call center, and in the evenings she goes to auditions at the FBI, CIA, State Department and other respectable institutions, demanding to get her into an agency where everyone is in black suits and handles with aliens.
In the end, Molly found the New York branch of Men in Black, made an illegal entry, she was immediately tied up, and Agent O (Emma Thompson) herself began to interview the girl. And you take me, said Molly, because, firstly, I really want to, and secondly, I don’t have a damn personal life: I’m not only a man, I haven’t even got a cat, that’s what I want black suit with black glasses.
The arguments are completely reinforced concrete, Molly is immediately made an intern with the name “Agent Em”, after which she is immediately sent to the London office, because not everything is in order with him, and it is the intern who has just been accepted to the probation.
In London, Agent H (Chris Hemsworth) doesn’t listen to top boss Mr. T (Liam Neeson), with whom they saved the world only three years ago with the help of wits, a hitch, and a stand-alone series seven deneuralizer, is piggy, late for meetings and generally pretends to be a superstar . But he is like a son for Ti, so Ti always forgives him everything.
Molly, with a cunning female reception and a portion of outright lies, attracts the attention of H, after which he takes her on a terribly responsible task: a Sokovian of royal blood has arrived on Earth, who is eager for all sorts of alcoholic and sexual entertainment prohibited on Sokovia, so H must compose him company.
Meanwhile, the Sokovian is being hunted by two electric ghosts from the planet Tiki Puk who want to kill the sexy fat man and take away his terrible weapon in the form of a Rubik’s Cube.
***
Barry Sonnenfeld’s first film, Men in Black, based on Lovell Cunningham’s 1950s comics, came out in 1997 and it was a pretty big cinematic event because it was just so great: witty, effective, and really cool.
The sequel came out five years later, and it was also quite good, although there were still some flaws with the script. But everyone was redeemed by the dashing couple of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, terribly funny aliens, excellent storytelling dynamics and gorgeous special effects.
The triquel was only released in 2012. Moreover, there were difficulties with him: for some time the studio could not agree with Barry Sonnenfeld and even seemed to be going to give the franchise into the hands of Michael Bay, Tommy Lee Jones flatly refused to act, and it was not clear what to show in the continuation. But in the end, the studio still figured out how to revive the triquel: most of the time in the picture, where a careless time jump was made, the young Kay, who was excellently played by Josh Brolin, acted. The picture turned out to be very cheerful, several completely new funny characters were introduced there (one Griffin played by Michael Stuhlbarg is worth something), so it all looked very decent, although the picture earned very little money (the budget was greatly inflated right up to $ 225 million), but never failed.
Five years later, the studio again thought about continuing the franchise. Initially, it was clear that neither Barry Sonnenfeld, nor Will Smith, nor Tommy Lee Jones would participate in this. Therefore, the studio considered some pretty wild projects like teaming up with the franchise the characters of Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill from Macho and Nerd. (On IMDB, by the way, complete nonsense is written about this: they confused “21 Jump street”, that is, “Macho and Botan”, with the old series “Jump Street, 21” with Johnny Depp.)
But then, thank God, they abandoned this and decided to follow the latest trends in Hollywood, where it is now very fashionable to replace famous male characters with female ones. However, they did not think of a couple of militant feminists (maybe even lesbians), so they decided to make one agent a nice lady, and the other a pumped-up “cross-dresser”. Well, then a couple of Chris Hemsworth – Tessa Thompson from the third “Thor” came to their mind, after which it remained to mold a new story from what was.
Blinded, to be honest, frankly lousy. From a scenario point of view, everything here is rather poor: there is no integrity, and with bright characters, too, somehow, you know, it didn’t work out.
Again, some muddy (in the literal sense of the word) aliens are hunting for some kind of muddy prism, which – well, of course – is a deadly weapon that can blow solar systems to smithereens in half and can even make a hole in the desert, in the London branch – surprise, surprise ! – the traitor bitch wound up, and the audience will be so persistently thrust into the frame of the slick bore agent C that even the most stupid will understand that the traitor is not him, well, Hemsworth and Tessa will sadly run around cities and countries (it is also International, children ) and pretend that they will save this Earth now, and then after-party and disco.
With the central couple, in general, they missed. Moreover, it was necessary to try from Hemsworth, who, in general, is quite cool and in the hands of a good director like Taika Waititi can light up, make some kind of frank fool at the exit. “The best agent of the London branch” at every step is screwing up, fakapit and frankly fooling around. Why this should be funny – I don’t understand, but I’ll reveal a terrible secret – and this is not a damn thing and it’s not funny, it just looks stupid.
Liam Neeson as T – terribly dull. A kind of Miles from the stupid “Hostages”, retired for the fifth time – there is nothing more to say about him.
Well, I’m silent about the fact that there is no intelligible main thing here at all: famous dancers Les Twins play two ghosts from the planet Sneeze-Puff, they are silent all the time, so the scriptwriters saved themselves linear meters of dialogues, especially since the unkillable ghosts were shamefully merged closer to the final. By the way, in the finale, the same “mole” from the London branch turned into an alien cockroach from the first film, which Bublik and I considered outright cheating.
All this is rather long and non-dynamic. The dialogue between Molly and Agent H is boring and uninteresting. No chemistry, no physics, not even geometry between them was observed at all.
There are also surprisingly few action scenes, and those that are present are shot completely without a twinkle.
So the result, you ask, sucks? Why then a rating of 6.0? It’s low enough, but it doesn’t suck. So the film is not bad, but rather weak. Maybe, in isolation from the previous three films of the franchise, it would have looked better, but here the whole point is that almost all more or less worthy things are copied from previous films. And the creators of the picture really didn’t have their own ideas.
Perhaps the only thing they came up with for this film was a little chatty alien named Pawn. Here he acts as a clown at the exit and periodically like a joke. But, to be honest, these jokes are only for a very unpretentious public.
No script, indistinct protagonists, not very interesting fantastic characters, sluggish intrigue, and even this damn Paris in the finale with the only, I confess, decent joke: “Paris?! I hate Paris!”
It is completely optional to watch, unless there will be absolutely nothing to watch, and a box of beer is hiding in the refrigerator, which will somehow brighten up this dullness.
A movie that definitely shouldn’t have been made. But they already understood this from the box office: the picture failed at the box office, showing a TCC of 2.3, that is, it did not even pay off.
Men in Black: International / Men in Black International movie meaning
Director: Ef Gary Gray Cast: Chris Hemsworth, Liam Neeson, Emma Thompson, Rafe Spall, Rebecca Ferguson, Kaivan Novak, Tessa Thompson, Kumail Nanjiani, Laurent Bourgeois, Larry Bourgeois
Budget: $110 million, Global gross: $253 million
Fantastic action movie, USA, 2019, 114 min.