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Men in Black is one of those quintessential ’90s blockbusters that was impossible to escape when it hit theaters in 1997. The theme song dominated music channels and still stands as one of Will Smith’s biggest hits. The movie itself was just as massive, cementing Smith’s status as a bona fide box office draw after the successes of Bad Boys and Independence Day. He tried to follow the same crowd-pleasing playbook with Wild Wild West two years later, but that gamble backfired and put a noticeable dent in his career, no matter how ridiculously catchy that theme song was.
James, an NYC cop, is hired by Agent K of a secret government agency that monitors extraterrestrial life on Earth. Together, they must recover an item that has been stolen by an intergalactic villain.
What makes Men in Black so great is that everything just clicks. The chemistry between Jones and Smith is effortless, and their back-and-forth banter is easily one of the movie’s biggest highlights. Despite taking place mostly in New York, the film somehow builds an entire hidden world beneath the surface and balances its exposition and action with near-perfect pacing.
The concept itself is a clever one, and nearly 30 years later, it feels like the kind of original blockbuster that probably wouldn’t get made today. Ironically, it was based on a Marvel comic, according to the credits. I’d never even heard of it at the time, despite being more into comics than the average person. That actually places the movie squarely in that weird ’90s era when studios kept adapting obscure or pulp comics into big-budget films, like Tank Girl, The Rocketeer, Barb Wire, The Shadow, Judge Dredd, and Dick Tracy, to name a few.
As the villain, Vincent D’Onofrio delivers a performance none of the sequels ever managed to top. His Edgar, a giant alien cockroach awkwardly wearing a human body as a disguise, is a brilliantly grotesque creation. The stiff, off-kilter movements, the slack posture, the strange, halting speech pattern, it all adds up to something deeply unsettling and weirdly funny at the same time. He’s unpredictable, memorable, and steals just about every scene he’s in.
What also makes Men in Black such a quintessential ’90s movie is how firmly it belongs to that wave of effects-driven blockbusters. After Jurassic Park and Terminator 2 changed the game, every year seemed to bring at least one film that sold itself on cutting-edge CGI, and this was clearly one of them. Of course, ’90s CGI doesn’t always age gracefully, and Men in Black is no exception. The alien encounter that opens the film is a textbook case of that glossy, early-CGI look, with rubbery skin and lifeless eyes. Still, Edgar’s full cockroach form in the finale holds up surprisingly well, looking great in most shots, even if there are a few moments where the creature’s face clearly screams “computer generated.”
If there’s one thing that’s always bugged me about the movie, it’s James’ character development. All we really learn about him before he becomes J is that he’s a cop willing to go to extreme lengths to chase down a suspect, and that he’s sharper than he first appears. Beyond that, we get almost nothing about his personal life. The film implies he has friends and family, a life outside the job, but we never actually see any of it. He’s mostly just Will Smith doing what Will Smith does best: all charm and charisma.
That makes his decision to join the Men in Black feel a little too easy. K clearly spells out what the job entails, leaving everything behind and essentially becoming dead to everyone you’ve ever known. It’s a huge sacrifice, yet J accepts it with barely a moment’s hesitation. For such a major life-altering choice, it feels oddly weightless.
Still, that’s a small gripe in an otherwise hugely entertaining film. Men in Black remains one of the best high-concept blockbusters of the ’90s and, nearly 30 years later, it’s just as fun and rewatchable as ever.
