Men In Black: International will leave you wishing to be neuralysed

movie review

Men in Black: International

Starring: Chris Hemsworth, Tessa Thompson, Rebecca Ferguson, Kumail Nanjiani, Rafe Spall, Laurent Bourgeois, Larry Bourgeois, Emma Thompson, and Liam Neeson

Directed by: F. Gary Gray

The 2019 summer movie season isn’t going quite the way film buffs would have hoped. The big budget cinematic offerings so far have mostly been subpar, with very few intriguing exceptions. Men in Black: International, unfortunately, isn’t one of those exciting outliers.

The lacklustre spin-off of the MIB series shifts the setting from the U.S. to the U.K. branch of the galaxy-defending organization but doesn’t bother to bring anything new or even slightly interesting to the franchise.

Molly (Tessa Thompson), who witnessed the Men in Black in action when she was a child, manages to track down the MIB headquarters in New York nearly two decades later. She asks organization head, Agent O (Emma Thompson), to recruit her to the agency, whereupon she is given a probationary position and sent to the London branch which is headed by Agent High T (Liam Neeson). There she manages to team up with Agent H (Chris Hemsworth) and finds herself trying to ward off an alien threat while figuring out if there is a mole in the organization.

Things unfold unexcitingly, predictably, banally. There isn’t an ounce of creativity anywhere in the plot. It’s infuriatingly easy to tell from the very start what the supposed twist will ultimately be. 

It’s a storyline as stale as its lead pairing. We’ve already seen Hemsworth and Thompson together in the significantly more fun Avengers series, and the filmmakers probably assumed it would be financially astute to team the two up again and borrow some of Marvel’s mammoth appeal in the process. But this time around the pair have been burdened with a script so lacklustre that it ends up reflecting negatively on their acting talent. Hemsworth’s presence seems limited mostly to smirking and looking good in a suit, while Thompson’s performance doesn’t merit building a whole franchise around her.

Even supporting actors as experienced as Thompson and Neeson can’t insert much life into this damp-squib of a film. And with Kumail Nanjiani’s grating alien sidekick character Pawny, the MIB series now has its own equivalent of Jar Jar Binks. Joy.

The charm of the original MIB trilogy – which itself faltered with its second instalment before correcting course somewhat with its final piece – is nowhere to be found here. The special effects may be impressive, but the action is dull, the tension is lacking, and the humour doesn’t hit the mark. Basically MIB:I is just very unnecessary. The movie only manages to make you miss Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones; the fact that the original duo don’t even make a cameo here is a downright disappointment.

MIB:I is shiny on the surface and completely vacant underneath. It feels like director F. Gary Gray and his team have tried to play it safe by imitating the original series but have failed to account for the fact that sticking to well-worn lanes leads to destinations that are unexciting and generic, which is pretty much the opposite of what science fiction should be.

Returning to the amusing sci-fi world of Men in Black could have been so much fun with some cool new ideas and a better script. Instead we have ended up with a movie that is likely to leave viewers wishing to be neuralysed in order to forget they were subjected to this banal retread. Then again, with a film this unmemorable, who even needs a neuralyser?

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

- Sameen Amer

The Express Tribune Blog - 28th June, 2019 *