MiBI, Maybe?

Possibly because we weren’t expecting the moon, we enjoyed Men in Black: International (2019). I would say that it was exactly good enough.

We start with the backstory of the protagonists, Tessa Thompson and Chris Hemsworth (yes, Thor and Valkyrie). Hemsworth and his mentor Liam Neeson first take on an interdimensional alien swarm at the Eiffel Tower. Then we see Tessa Thompson as a little kid watching her parents being neuralyzed when they see an alien. She helps the cute little alien escape and remembers everything.

That’s the start of her journey. She spends the rest of her life studying and researching, trying to find the Men in Black organization. When she does, she convinces them not to neuralyze her because she is very smart - she found them, right - and she has no other life. And so she is sent as a probationary MiB to the London office.

Hemsworth, on the other hand, has been letting things slide - sloppy MiB work, getting by on charm and luck, and by the way, being a total man-slut - sleeping with the aliens if that’s what they like. This sort of reminds me of how he was a just a bimbo in Ghostbusters. When he gets the assignment to show Vungus the Ugly (Kayvan Novak) a good time while he’s on Earth, Thompson talks her way onto the assignment. And of course it goes very badly.

Hemsworth’ s character is pretty fun - like I say, man-slut party boy who Is one of the best agents, but pissing it all away. Thompson’s is a little more of a problem. She has to be a big nerd - no life outside her desire to be an agent. She has to be naive and idealistic, and she does it well. But she also has to be sassy and street when called on, because (I guess) she’s black? I guess it isn’t too bad.

A lot of this movie is very predictable, and it tilts pretty strongly to cute. Take Kumail Nanjiani’s “Pawny”, a tiny alien chess pawn. Very cuddly. But Hemsworth and Thompson are just so charismatic and lovely that you can forgive a lot. At least we could, and did. There was no need for this movie, but it was good enough for us.

In conclusion, remember Zed’s funeral in MiB3? It was pretty much “He never told me a single thing about himself”? Now everybody knows everything about any agent. It’s a damn shame.