Thompson And Hemsworth Have Too Much Heavy Lifting To Do In Men In Black International
As surprising as it was for Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones to return for Men In Black 3 after a ten-year hiatus from the franchise, it’s equally surprising to see Sony trying to reboot the franchise with new leads for Men In Black International. All things considered, I was personally excited upon the announcement that the two new leads would be Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth. The pair’s comedic chemistry in 2017’s Thor Ragnarok was undeniable, so it stood to reason that they could bring that same winning magic to a Men In Black film.
In the film, Tessa Thompson plays a young woman who has spent the entirety of her adult life trying to find the Men In Black, having avoided being neuralized by them over 20 years prior, after she helped an alien escape from them as a child. After sneaking into their New York headquarters in present day, and impressing the director, O, she is given the new moniker of Agent M, and sent to MIB’s London office to shadow their top Agent, H, played by Chris Hemsworth. Together, the two will have to protect a powerful weapon from not only a pair of matter manipulating aliens, but also a species known as The Hive, which Agent H was to have eliminated three years earlier.
Casting Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth in this film is easily the best decision the filmmakers could have possibly made. The two work so well together, as Thompson’s M is more logical and analytical, while Hemsworth’s H is the rogue hotshot of the organization, leaping first and thinking second. Obviously there is a familiarity to seeing them in this film, given how recently they appeared together in Avengers Endgame this past spring, but their dynamic in MIB International is decidedly different. M already exhibits this wild-eyed bewilderment about the universe and the reality of the existence of alien life, and there are handfuls of great comedic moments in the film between her and H, as he’s trying to show her the ropes. H doesn’t seem to take the job all that seriously, so we also have moments where she wonders how he could ever be one of MIB London’s top agents. There’s an effortlessness in the way the two actors interact with one another, and I would not be surprised if they improvised some of their scenes together.
The bad news is that MIB International doesn’t make many other good decisions beyond that. I take no issue with Sony trying to squeeze a little more life out of the Men In Black franchise, and at least in concept, MIB International is as sound a concept for a reboot to introduce new characters as any (remember, this was originally supposed to be a crossover film with 21 Jump Street ). As previously stated, Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth are a perfect pair for a film like this, incorporating a dynamic between the characters that sets itself apart from Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones in an effective and engaging way. The problem is that there’s little to no effort in building an interesting film around them.
A lot of this is due to the film’s over-reliance on CGI, as the absence of previous creature makeup artist Rick Baker is exacerbated by the constant use of motion-capture and CG face replacement for all the alien side characters with humanoid bodies. This actually plays into another factor bringing MIB International down a notch for me, as the villains are in this film are so poorly defined. The Hive as some sort of collective malevolent force is more of a referential footnote for a majority of the film, while a bigger threat is represented in the form of Beyonce’s backup dancers.
That’s right, identical dancing brothers Laurent and Larry Bourgeois, better known as “Les Twins”, are featured prominently as a two shapeshifting aliens who will stop at nothing to retrieve the requisite McGuffin from H & M (clever product placement though, movie! You got a gold star for that one!), and it’s the most pointless stunt casting I’ve seen since Pamela Anderson showed up in the last 10 seconds of Dwayne Johnson and Zak Efron’s Baywatch to do a hair flip in slow-motion. It’s not that I mind stunt casting, and as an admirer of Les Twins, I was actually looking forward to them being featured in MIB International. Naturally, we get a scene of them showing off their street dancing skills as they try to fit into their environment, in one scene where they track H & M to a dance club patronized by both humans and aliens in London. Unfortunately, the film tries to juggle so many elements in that single scene that this moment plays out so stilted and truncated that it might as well not have been included.
My biggest frustration with MIB International, quite honestly, is that the studio simply hired the wrong director. F. Gary Gray has a solid resume, and there are several of his films that I consider personal favorites. To say nothing of him having already director a sequel to a Barry Sonnenfeld film, directing the follow-up to Get Shorty, Be Cool, in 2005. Admittedly, the tonal shift that was Be Cool didn’t particularly captivate audiences who where fans of Get Shorty, but there’s no denying that it’s a film with its own charm and identity. This is unfortunately not the case with MIB International, as Gray feels ill-equipped to handle the humor that would come from basing so much of the action in the UK, and other parts Europe of northern Africa. I can almost guarantee that a British director would have fought to exclude the idea of referring to Liam Neeson’s MIB London head as “High T” (because, you know . . . LONDON?!?! TEA?!?!?! GET IT?!?! . . . ), at least that would be my hope. But it speaks to cultural sensibility as it relates to humor, especially within the genre of science fiction, and I feel as though there are a handful of directors outside of your standard Hollywood stable, who could have done more to make the humor work.
Make no mistake, the potential was there for Men In Black International to be a solid follow-up to the original trilogy. However, the film coasts on its casting of Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth, and makes no real effort in terms of exploring the supplementary elements present in the first movies that made them work outside of the chemistry between Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. Thompson and Hemsworth do the best they can with the material they’re given, so if you’re in the mindset of seeing the film just to watch them riff on each other as they did in Thor Ragnarok, you may possibly get your money’s worth. If nothing else, we do get Tessa Thompson looking pretty damn good in that black suit. . .
[2 out of 5]
