MEN IN BLACK
A film review by Ben Hoffman
Copyright 1997 Ben Hoffman
OUT OF THIS WORLD! EXTRATERRESTRIAL AND EXTRA-HILARIOUS! The Sci-Fi genre has never been this funny. With some witty lines written by screen story and screenplay writer Ed Solomon, free rein is given to Tommy Lee Jones in his role of K, the man in black who works for the unofficial government agency that monitors aliens on Earth. There credo is "Protecting the Earth from the scum of the universe." K spouts some very funny lines despite his tongue never leaving his cheek. Jones is terrific. Look for lots of belly-laughs. Why are these agents called "MEN IN BLACK?" Because they dress in black, why else?
When Zed (Rip Torn), the chief of the agency, learns that inhabitants of another planet are planning on conquering Earth, he assigns J (Will Smith) to help K save us. It is good to see Smith again on the large screen after that fine performance in SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION of a few years ago. Casting could not have chosen a better actor for the role of J.
The evil extraterrestrial, Edgar, (Vincent D'Onofrio) visits a farmhouse, takes over the farmer's body and for the rest of the movie grimaces and walks around like a Dr. Frankenstein's monster reject . . . except that Edgar is a takeoff on monsters and a funny takeoff it is.
When some strange deaths occur, the bodies are turned over to a medical examiner, Dr. Laura Weaver (the pretty Linda Fiorentino) who becomes involved with the monsters and with trying to save the planet.
Special effects include the gelatinous slime that the aliens squirt at the Earthlings. There is an alien, Mikey, whose exterior is that of a Mexican immigrant but he cannot fool our hero, K, who rips off his false face to expose his hideous, slimy real self while immigration border patrol police are shocked. Then there is the High Priest of Baltia who likewise uses a human disguise.
The visual special effects were supervised by Eric Brevig; (Industrial Light & Magic) the alien make-up by Rick Baker. These are all excellent. The film is based on the Malibu Comic by Lowell Cunningham.
Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld.
4 Bytes
4 bytes = Superb 3 bytes = Too good to miss 2 bytes = Average 1 byte = Save your money
Ben Hoffman
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews