What on earth happened here? The original Men In Black was endlessly creative and funny. Men In Black II recreates the look of the first film and none of its spirit. It stumbles from one unfunny sketch to another and never gets anywhere. What were the filmmakers thinking? Are alien civilizations inside lockers funny? Are giant worms that infest subway tunnels funny?

Even the world itself fails to work. Part of the magic of the original film was that, however outrageous, the idea that aliens regularly immigrate to Earth and adopt normal "human" lives was just plausible enough to be enchanting. But here it doesn't make any sense at all: the evidence that aliens are living amongst humans is ubiquitous, plainly available to the naked eye, even when the aliens are behaving. When they are not, as in the case of the opening subway scene, it is inconceivable that there weren't thousands of eyewitnesses, and, furthermore, whose bright idea was it to allow raging subway eating aliens to immigrate in the first place?

These thoughts shouldn't be going through my head. I should be enchanted enough by the idea of men in black and memory wipers and aliens amongst us that I don't care about agonizing over inconsistencies. I should be too busy laughing anyhow. Men In Black II fails at absolutely everything the first film succeeded at.