posted 02-05-2002 12:03 AM               

Men in Black is one of the few science-fiction comedies out there, and its success makes you wonder why there aren't more. (There are some who might say Wild, Wild West provides an answer to that question, but that's neither here nor there.) Solomon, Sonnefeld, Jones and Smith do a great job with an outstanding premise from Cunningham's comic - what if aliens have been among us for years, with a group of secretive agents keeping them in line and the average earthling in the dark?

Even though conspiracies are often played for suspense or horror, they offer great fodder for comedy - all those annoying things that don't make sense, and that usually provide fodder for standup comics, can be grist for the mill. Men in Black takes that potential and runs with it, incorporating everything from the Queens World Fair and the New York blackout to supermarket tabloids in its off-kilter world view. Jones and Smith have great chemistry as the veteran Agent K and the new recruit J; they're clearly having fun with the story, and they play off each other well. That chemistry, and the film's willingness to embrace the absurd, are its strengths. The plot itself is pretty basic - K recruits J into the Men in Black, while a cockroach-like alien arrives on Earth to wreak havoc. There are some decent action sequences and nifty visual effects to bring them to life, but the fun here is in exploring the situation.

The DVD contains a number of features, although the menus are a bit confusing in their layout. The visual commentary by Sonnenfeld and Jones is decent, although it can also get annoying pretty quickly, as Sonnefeld sometimes uses the screen as a telestrator. There are a number of effects-based features - including a breakdown of the different effects layers used in the car-in-the-tunnel sequence, storyboards, conceptual art, and character animation studies - that should be of interest to fans of such making-of material. Smith's entertaining video for the movie's theme is also included, which is a nice touch. (I admit, when I first saw the video, with many years gone by since the last efforts of the Fresh Prince, I asked myself when Smith decided to get into music . . .) Some inconsequential deleted/extended scenes are also included.

The most interesting of the special features is the all-new documentary 'Metamorphosis of Men in Black,' which discusses two major changes to the film that occurred either during filming or in post-production. Almost at the last minute, Sonnenfeld decided to change the end of the film to make it more action-based, eliminating the need for the elaborate physical creature Rick Baker created to be able to deliver dialogue, and instead requiring lots of last minute CGI work to create a bigger, badder bug. You don't really get much information on what the old ending was, so there's no opportunity to evaluate the decision.