{"id":43437,"date":"2019-06-17T01:45:06","date_gmt":"2019-06-17T05:45:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=43437"},"modified":"2019-06-17T01:45:17","modified_gmt":"2019-06-17T05:45:17","slug":"men-in-black-international-movie-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2019\/06\/men-in-black-international-movie-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Men in Black: International \u2013 Movie Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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By Bob Garver<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            \u201cMen\nin Black: International\u201d doesn\u2019t deserve to call itself a \u201cMen in Black\u201d movie.\nSure it\u2019s about a mismatched pair of secret agents (Tessa Thompson and Chris\nHemsworth) who wear black suits and sunglasses and police space aliens and wipe\npeople\u2019s memories with a flashing neuralyzer, but it lacks the heart that gave\nthe first three \u201cMen in Black\u201d movies their identity. And I\u2019m not just saying\nthat because we have two new leads instead of the legendary team-up of Will\nSmith and Tommy Lee Jones, I would have been fine with any two leads as long as\nthey had good chemistry. I\u2019m saying that because these new characters and the\nstory surrounding them are not funny, exciting, or interesting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Agent\nM (Thompson) is the new kid at MIB\u2019s New York City branch, having pursued a\nspot in the mysterious organization since childhood. Her boss (Emma Thompson,\nno relation to Tessa) feels that her talents could be more immediately useful\nin London. So M is off to a world she doesn\u2019t understand (the steering wheel is\non the right over there!) to do a job she doesn\u2019t fully understand, where she\nhas to work with beings that she definitely doesn\u2019t understand. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            One\nsuch hard-to-understand being is her new partner H (Hemsworth). He\u2019s a human,\nthat part she can understand. But she doesn\u2019t understand why the reckless slob\nhas such a high standing in the organization. Apparently a few years ago he and\nnow-head T (Liam Neeson) defeated a powerful enemy called The Hive using\nnothing more than their wits and a couple of Series 7 de-atomizers. It would\nseem that the \u201cwits\u201d component has since diminished in H, and he now succeeds only\nthrough bribery and dumb luck, creating headaches for T and the justifiably\ngrouchy C (Rafe Spall). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            M\nand H\u2019s first mission together is a simple bodyguarding assignment for an alien\nroyal. But the mission gets botched with the return of The Hive. They\u2019re back\nand have their sights set on conquering Earth. Suspecting that The Hive has a\nmole in MIB, M and H go rogue and travel to Morocco, where they find more dead\nroyals, discover that they\u2019re in possession of a weapon of mass destruction,\nget in a flying motorcycle chase, burgle H\u2019s multi-armed arms dealer\nex-girlfriend (Rebecca Ferguson), and have other adventures typical of this\nfranchise. Along the way they take on the services of ineffective protector\nPawny (Kumail Nanjiani). My only strong opinion of this movie is that Pawny is\nincredibly annoying. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

            Most\nof the film\u2019s humor comes from either alien weirdness or M and H bickering with\neach other. As far as the aliens, there is literally a universe of\npossibilities, but the film rarely goes for anything more ambitious than \u201cthey\nsure look funny when they\u2019re amorous, huh?\u201d As for M and H, I won\u2019t go so far\nas to say they have zero chemistry because I think it\u2019s scientifically\nimpossible to make these two actors unlikeable, but they already teamed up in\n\u201cThor: Ragnarok\u201d and they were much better there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

            I\nloved 1997\u2019s \u201cMen in Black\u201d so much that I bought it on video. This was at a\ntime when the number of movies I owned (as opposed to rented) didn\u2019t reach\ndouble digits. But I liked the creative aliens and gadgets, the funny script,\nand the general sharpness of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones so much that I\nwanted to have access to them at a moment\u2019s notice. Compared to that movie, or\neven one of its less-inspired sequels, \u201cMen in Black: International\u201d is staggeringly\nineffective. Nothing outside of Pawny is truly terrible, but this is a film\nthat is all too satisfied to merely be \u201cnot truly terrible.\u201d An easy joke would\nbe to say that I wish I could be neuralyzed and forget this movie, but this\nmovie is perfectly capable of being forgettable on its own. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grade: C-<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMen in Black: International\u201d is rated PG-13 for sci-fi action, some language, and suggestive material. Its running time is 114 minutes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver             \u201cMen in Black: International\u201d doesn\u2019t deserve to call itself a \u201cMen in Black\u201d movie. Sure it\u2019s about a mismatched pair of secret agents (Tessa Thompson and… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":43438,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43437"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}