Barry Sonnenfeld's 1997 film takes an inventive science fiction premise and delivers it with a wit, a pace, and a central pairing of such effortless chemistry that the considerable entertainment value makes the modest ambitions feel entirely sufficient. It is not a work of great thematic depth or narrative complexity, but it is a work of craft, and its ability to make its alien-populated world feel simultaneously absurd and wholly credible is one of the decade's more inventive pieces of popular science fiction construction.
At a Glance
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Runtime: 98 minutes
Starring: Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Linda Fiorentino, Vincent D'Onofrio, Rip Torn
Release: 1997
Critics Rating: ★★★★ (4/5 stars, a perfectly calibrated sci-fi comedy)
Audience Rating: ★★★★½ (4.5/5 stars, one of the most purely entertaining blockbusters of the 1990s)
Plot
New York City police officer James Edwards is recruited into the Men in Black, a secret government agency that monitors and polices the alien population living on Earth in disguise. Partnered with the veteran Agent K, the newly designated Agent J must track down a galaxy hidden inside a decorative ornament before an alien bug, wearing the skin of a murdered farmer, can retrieve it and trigger an intergalactic war. The screenplay by Ed Solomon, adapting Lowell Cunningham's comic book, is a model of efficient genre construction, establishing the MIB's world with enough specificity and enough wit to give the comedy its grounding while maintaining the pace that the premise requires. The shrewdest structural decision is the consistent use of J's outsider perspective to introduce the audience to the MIB's world, giving the exposition a comic dimension that prevents it from slowing the narrative.
Characters
The chemistry between Will Smith's J and Tommy Lee Jones's K is the indispensable element and one of the screen's great pairings, a double act of Smith's irrepressible energy and Jones's deadpan authority that generates comedy from the contrast between their registers rather than from the material alone. Smith's J is the franchise's most confident human protagonist, a character of wit and screen presence whose reactions to the MIB's world give the picture its most entertaining passages. Jones's K is the most layered character, a man of evident competence and evident sadness whose personal history gives the franchise's mythology a human dimension that the sequels would develop with varying degrees of success. Linda Fiorentino's Dr Laurel Weaver is the most underused element, a medical examiner of sharp wit and comic intelligence whose function is primarily to provide the narrative's romantic subplot rather than to be a fully realised character in her own right. D'Onofrio's Edgar the Bug is the franchise's most physically committed villain performance, a portrayal of an alien inhabiting a human body with increasing difficulty that generates both comedy and unease. Rip Torn's Zed is the most enjoyably deadpan supporting performance, a MIB director of considerable pragmatism and wit whose scenes with J give the world construction its sharpest passages.
Meaning / Themes
The central concern is the relationship between identity and memory, a theme that the franchise's mythology, with its neuralyser technology and its agents' surrendered personal histories, develops with enough consistency to give the picture a modest thematic dimension beyond its entertainment mechanics. K's decision to have his own memory erased at the conclusion, returning to the life he abandoned when he joined the MIB, is the franchise's most emotionally resonant moment and gives the picture a bittersweet ending that its comic register does not fully prepare the audience for.
Direction
Sonnenfeld pitches the picture at a register of deadpan absurdist comedy, a tonal choice that gives the alien sequences a matter-of-fact quality that makes them funnier than a more overtly comic approach would have achieved. The sharpest sequences are those in which the MIB's world is revealed through casual observation rather than dramatic revelation, and the sequence in which J and K visit a pawnshop run by an alien of considerable antiquity is the most finely timed passage in the picture.
Sonnenfeld's direction is the most tonally disciplined of his career, maintaining the deadpan tonal register across a narrative that moves from New York's streets to the MIB's headquarters to the alien-infested finale with a coherence and a pace that the material requires. His handling of the visual effects, which integrate the alien characters into the New York setting with enough specificity to make them feel like inhabitants rather than digital additions, demonstrates a command of the comic construction requirements that the sequels would not always maintain. Danny Elfman's score is the franchise's most distinctive musical achievement, giving the MIB's world a sonic identity as recognisable as its visual one.
Men in Black received strong reviews on its release and was a massive commercial success, grossing over $589 million worldwide to become one of the highest-grossing films of 1997. It launched one of the decade's most successful franchise properties, won the Academy Award for Best Makeup, and established Will Smith as one of Hollywood's most bankable stars. It is now regarded as one of the defining popular comedies of the 1990s, a picture whose wit, craft, and central pairing have secured its place in the decade's cultural canon.
Final Verdict: A science fiction comedy of wit, craft, and effortless chemistry that delivers its entertainment with a precision the franchise would not again achieve. Smith and Jones's central pairing is one of the screen's great comic partnerships, Sonnenfeld's direction maintains the deadpan tonal register with impressive consistency, and the MIB's world is one of the decade's most inventive pieces of popular science fiction construction. It is the franchise at its best and one of the 1990s' most purely entertaining blockbusters.