lab rat and real rat at the movies: the sequel
In which my pet rat Bukowski and I review the best of thrift store finds, six dollar Tuesdays, and free movies on demand. First installment can be found here
Tonight's feature: Men in Black II
ELR: I don't know if it's a guilty pleasure, a personal quirk, or just a case of me taking irony too far, but if there's one thing that I love, it's rap songs that recap a movie during the end credits. This was a staple back when executives still considered rap "the new thing" that the kids love. It wasn't in all movies and hardly ever anything serious, but every time one of those hype-machine movies, the type of movie that would come with it's own correlative Burger King cups came out, it was there. Unfortunately, this means that we were never treated to a Schindler's List edition of the Quad City DJ's "Come on Ride the Train", and Young MC never did "The Last of the Mohicans (Rap)", but we were treated to such gems as Partners in Krime's "Turtle Power" from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Bobby Brown's "On Our Own" from Ghostbusters II, and a track from each of the Addams Family movies (MC Hammers "Addams Groove" and Tag Team's "Whoomp (The Addams Family) There it Is!", respectively). I can't say for certain, because I don't have the time to subject myself to dreck like Snow Day and Unaccompanied Minors these days, but I'm pretty sure that Will Smith put the nail in the coffin of the rap-that-recaps-the-film with "Black Suits Comin' (Nod Ya Head)" from Men in Black 2.
It makes sense that he tried, though, as his theme songs for Wild Wild West and the original Men in Black were bonafied, platinum hits, but a few years of hits like those, and tracks like "Gettin Jiggy Wit It" and "Welcome to Miami", which were embarassing to all but the whitest and drunkest of drunk white tourists only months after they'd been released, had made it so that people no longer thought of the man who penned "Parents Just Don't Understand" as a serious rapper anymore.
That's the main problem with Men in Black II. They repeated too much of what worked the first time around, almost always to ill effect, as if they market tested the ideas but not the final product.
"A talking pug? A bunch of horndog alien worms? Tony Shalhoub getting his head blown off? Put em all back in and triple their screentime, and if you can put a suit on the pug and get him to sing, do that too. Something catchy, maybe that 'Who let the dogs out?' track."
Even a throwaway joke from the end of the first film implying that Dennis Rodman was an alien got repeated, only this time they used star cameos to make the same gag with megastar pariahs Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jackson, and Martha Stewart. It's the same fucking thing that happened to Austin Powers, right down to the overt product placement. The thing is, neither one of those films were perfect to begin with, and didn't have a lot of slack to give up, quality wise, even if the alien eating the Quarter Pounder is a hot chick with her tits all pushed up in leather fetish gear.
Bukowski: It's almost embarassing to say this, and defend this movie, but you're totally wrong about Men in Black II. For goddamn sure it ain't a perfect movie, but it does have it's moments, and I'm willing to venture that it's not just some shit movie with a couple of good moments, but the perfect movie to watch on a Sunday afternoon, that just happens to be saddled with some of the worst, most groan inducing moments ever captured on celluloid. If you can get past those few glaring terrible terrible jokes, you'll see that.
Given the right role and paced out just right, Tommy Lee Jones is one of the finest and most underused, underutilized, underappreciated comedic actors we've got today, from Small Soldiers to Natural Born Killers, to probably that movie where he's a disgraced cop who has to coach a cheerleading squad or whatever. For some reason, the character he does as Agent K, a blaze country boy with a couple odd tics, plays really well off of Will Smith, who's at his best when he's playing an action hero version of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
The movie, both movies, use a great mix of slapstick, character driven comedy, and, parsed out in tiny doses here and there, some dark (or if not dark, at least off-putting) comedy. Take this quick line from David Cross :
"Hey do you guys want some mini pizzas. They're like little bagels with pizza stuff on em. My Mom makes em, and she'll put a little extra cheese on them, but she's got palsey so she really puts a lot of extra cheese on."
He says it real quick and quiet, like it might be an improv and it might be an afterthought or it might be him trying to sneak it past the editors. Of course it isn't, though. David Cross was brought back for this movie, after his bit part character got eaten by a giant bug in the first movie, and he's not the only Mr. Show alumni in the movie. I think that the makers of the film wanted to do a good matinee style movie, with sexy girls, a shit ton of special effects and as many aliens as they could cram into as many scenes as they could use them, and I think they wanted to make a dark comedy, at least a little, and they succeeded. I think you've gotta remember that you can fart a little bit more in a family comedy than what you could used to, but not much else has changed, and in fact G and PG and even PG-13 movies have gotten a lot tamer than they were in the seventies and eighties.
And all those jokes you mentioned? They look like add-ons, the result of hack script doctors brought on at the last minute, so that the producers could milk this thing for every easy laugh they could. It doesn't mean that the film can't be better than it's own jokes. Take this exchange, where Tommy Lee Jones, explains to the female lead that she's an alien, and will have to leave the planet to fulfill her destiny and blah blah blah:
Agent K: You know things before they happen.
Rosario Dawson: I'm a Libra.
Agent K: Ever notice that it rains a lot when you're sad?
Rosario: A lot of people get sad when it rains.
Agent K: Yeah, but with you, it rains, because you're sad.
I mean sure, it's not the deepest shit in the world, but we're talking genre here. Sci Fi fantasy with a PG-13 rating. Douglas Adams could've written it and, if you'd have bathed both the characters in the monochromatic blood of murdered prostitutes, so could Frank Miller. A few years back, some dude who was part super nerd and part true believer did what Hollywood, George Lucas, and a few hundred million dollars couldn't do: he edited himself a watchable version of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace If someone would just take the time to trim the fat off this movie, it would definitely be worth viewing more than once every five years.
So long as I can forget that any version of the film had an alien called Ballneck or something, whose balls were in his neck, and whom Tommy Lee dropped with a jumpkick to the neck. Then I just feel sad.
[currently listening to THE POLICE]
ELR: I don't know if it's a guilty pleasure, a personal quirk, or just a case of me taking irony too far, but if there's one thing that I love, it's rap songs that recap a movie during the end credits. This was a staple back when executives still considered rap "the new thing" that the kids love. It wasn't in all movies and hardly ever anything serious, but every time one of those hype-machine movies, the type of movie that would come with it's own correlative Burger King cups came out, it was there. Unfortunately, this means that we were never treated to a Schindler's List edition of the Quad City DJ's "Come on Ride the Train", and Young MC never did "The Last of the Mohicans (Rap)", but we were treated to such gems as Partners in Krime's "Turtle Power" from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Bobby Brown's "On Our Own" from Ghostbusters II, and a track from each of the Addams Family movies (MC Hammers "Addams Groove" and Tag Team's "Whoomp (The Addams Family) There it Is!", respectively). I can't say for certain, because I don't have the time to subject myself to dreck like Snow Day and Unaccompanied Minors these days, but I'm pretty sure that Will Smith put the nail in the coffin of the rap-that-recaps-the-film with "Black Suits Comin' (Nod Ya Head)" from Men in Black 2.
It makes sense that he tried, though, as his theme songs for Wild Wild West and the original Men in Black were bonafied, platinum hits, but a few years of hits like those, and tracks like "Gettin Jiggy Wit It" and "Welcome to Miami", which were embarassing to all but the whitest and drunkest of drunk white tourists only months after they'd been released, had made it so that people no longer thought of the man who penned "Parents Just Don't Understand" as a serious rapper anymore.
That's the main problem with Men in Black II. They repeated too much of what worked the first time around, almost always to ill effect, as if they market tested the ideas but not the final product.
"A talking pug? A bunch of horndog alien worms? Tony Shalhoub getting his head blown off? Put em all back in and triple their screentime, and if you can put a suit on the pug and get him to sing, do that too. Something catchy, maybe that 'Who let the dogs out?' track."
Even a throwaway joke from the end of the first film implying that Dennis Rodman was an alien got repeated, only this time they used star cameos to make the same gag with megastar pariahs Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jackson, and Martha Stewart. It's the same fucking thing that happened to Austin Powers, right down to the overt product placement. The thing is, neither one of those films were perfect to begin with, and didn't have a lot of slack to give up, quality wise, even if the alien eating the Quarter Pounder is a hot chick with her tits all pushed up in leather fetish gear.
Bukowski: It's almost embarassing to say this, and defend this movie, but you're totally wrong about Men in Black II. For goddamn sure it ain't a perfect movie, but it does have it's moments, and I'm willing to venture that it's not just some shit movie with a couple of good moments, but the perfect movie to watch on a Sunday afternoon, that just happens to be saddled with some of the worst, most groan inducing moments ever captured on celluloid. If you can get past those few glaring terrible terrible jokes, you'll see that.
Given the right role and paced out just right, Tommy Lee Jones is one of the finest and most underused, underutilized, underappreciated comedic actors we've got today, from Small Soldiers to Natural Born Killers, to probably that movie where he's a disgraced cop who has to coach a cheerleading squad or whatever. For some reason, the character he does as Agent K, a blaze country boy with a couple odd tics, plays really well off of Will Smith, who's at his best when he's playing an action hero version of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
The movie, both movies, use a great mix of slapstick, character driven comedy, and, parsed out in tiny doses here and there, some dark (or if not dark, at least off-putting) comedy. Take this quick line from David Cross :
"Hey do you guys want some mini pizzas. They're like little bagels with pizza stuff on em. My Mom makes em, and she'll put a little extra cheese on them, but she's got palsey so she really puts a lot of extra cheese on."
He says it real quick and quiet, like it might be an improv and it might be an afterthought or it might be him trying to sneak it past the editors. Of course it isn't, though. David Cross was brought back for this movie, after his bit part character got eaten by a giant bug in the first movie, and he's not the only Mr. Show alumni in the movie. I think that the makers of the film wanted to do a good matinee style movie, with sexy girls, a shit ton of special effects and as many aliens as they could cram into as many scenes as they could use them, and I think they wanted to make a dark comedy, at least a little, and they succeeded. I think you've gotta remember that you can fart a little bit more in a family comedy than what you could used to, but not much else has changed, and in fact G and PG and even PG-13 movies have gotten a lot tamer than they were in the seventies and eighties.
And all those jokes you mentioned? They look like add-ons, the result of hack script doctors brought on at the last minute, so that the producers could milk this thing for every easy laugh they could. It doesn't mean that the film can't be better than it's own jokes. Take this exchange, where Tommy Lee Jones, explains to the female lead that she's an alien, and will have to leave the planet to fulfill her destiny and blah blah blah:
Agent K: You know things before they happen.
Rosario Dawson: I'm a Libra.
Agent K: Ever notice that it rains a lot when you're sad?
Rosario: A lot of people get sad when it rains.
Agent K: Yeah, but with you, it rains, because you're sad.
I mean sure, it's not the deepest shit in the world, but we're talking genre here. Sci Fi fantasy with a PG-13 rating. Douglas Adams could've written it and, if you'd have bathed both the characters in the monochromatic blood of murdered prostitutes, so could Frank Miller. A few years back, some dude who was part super nerd and part true believer did what Hollywood, George Lucas, and a few hundred million dollars couldn't do: he edited himself a watchable version of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace If someone would just take the time to trim the fat off this movie, it would definitely be worth viewing more than once every five years.
So long as I can forget that any version of the film had an alien called Ballneck or something, whose balls were in his neck, and whom Tommy Lee dropped with a jumpkick to the neck. Then I just feel sad.
[currently listening to THE POLICE]
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