I love the Men In Black franchise. The OG films find that great movie mixture of comedy, action, and special effects, anchored by a spectacular pairing of Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith. I was hoping the world of Men In Black – secret government agency controlling alien activity – was a deep well of storytelling worthy of reboot, and I was also hoping that Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson, fresh off their chill chemistry in the Marvel universe, would be up to the task. After MIB International though, I might have been mistaken.
Agent H (Hemsworth) and Agent M (Tessa Thompson) took very different paths to get where they are in MIB. Agent M saw her parents neuralyzed when she was a child, which put her on a lifelong path to find this secret organization. H is MIB royalty, he and High T (Liam Neeson) stopped an invasion of The Hive, one of the worst threats to Earth. However, something happened to him since that day, and bureaucrats like Agent C (Rafe Spall) want to see him punished for his reckless behavior. However, the reemergence of The Hive brings H & M (perfect marketing campaign, later, MIB) together to handle the threat.
I like Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson. A lot. However, both of them lack the magnetism of Will Smith, who carried the Men In Black franchise with effortless magnetism. Hemsworth and Thompson could compensate this if the script were potent like the first Men In Black, which used Smith’s street smarts satirically against Jones’s stuck up agent. However, the movie operates like a studio told it to be only nostalgic. The plot recreates large swaths of the first MIB movie, which only makes you irritated that you could have just watched that more unpredictable and exciting 1997 film. The story exists to jump from point to point to point, and only briefly parse out any character information for either H or M. The relationship between Hemsworth and Thompson is underexplored and forced, and only in that irritating way where a joke is said…and then immediately explained. REPEATEDLY. It’s not good that the characters I felt the most for were Kumail Nanjiani’s comedic relief CGI character and Rebecca Ferguson’s shady arms dealer because their character motivations are better explained.
If they do make more of these Men In Black movies, I hope International was just a misfire. I do think the movie is cast alright; it just needs some actual rooting interesting for Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson. It needs to tap into that joy of discovery the first couple films had. And finally, it needs F Gary Gray, the director of Straight Outta Compton, not F Gary Gray, the director of The Fate of the Furious.