Word: alienate
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...alien" on your cover--with its predictable oversize head and creepy doe eyes--prompted one of my pet peeves: illustrations of extraterrestrial creatures that look just like humans. Get real! We humans are the product of a host of improbable accidents. Science tells us that space and life are weird beyond belief. And so are real aliens. ALAN M. PERLMAN Highland Park...
...humor of "MiB" depends heavily on satirically inverting the Roswell/ID$ concept of a government cover-up of alien visitations. The point here is covering up is the daily business of the Men in Black. To ensure that humans are kept in a state of tranquil ignorance. Jones coolly erases people's memories of encounters-of-the-third-kind simply by holding up a handy-dandy pen-shaped object called a "newralyzer." More importantly, the MiB serve as the planet's inter-terrestrial INS agents, regulating the movements of some 1500 aliens sojourning on Earth, concentrated mainly in NYC and mostly...
Jones plays the unflappable agent "k", who's apparently never met an E.T. that he couldn't place. Smith, a former NYPD cop, joins him as agent-in-training "J" after running down and almost bagging an alien offender. They're soon confronted with the mother of all diplomatic crises: when the big bad extraterrestrial Bug lands on Earth, assassinates a high-ranking alien and steals a galaxy (don't ask), the assassinated alien's compatriots threaten to destroy Earth if the galaxy isn't recovered...
...much for the plot, which is never the strength of a spoof. "MiB" is a patchwork of moments--here, definitely, the parts are greater than the whole. The movie's at its best when poking fun at the tabloid culture that thrives on alleged alien sightings. Supermarket tabloids are the real news sources for the MiB (quips Jones: "you can read the New York Times if you like, they sometimes get it right"). The story of a farm wife, Beatrice (appropriately illustrated with an adapted copy of "American Gothic"), who claims that an alien's wearning her husband Edgar...
Perhaps the best thing about "Men in Black"--besides Danny Elfman's deliciously campy score--is its ending sequence, in which Earth is visually reduced to an alien's plaything. This and occassional lines from Jones referring to Earth as a little backwater planet almost smack of Douglas Adams. Too bad he didn't have a hand in writing the script...