So Malibu Comics' finest, the boys in black, are back after a five-year absence. It doesn't seem as if they've been away so long. On the one hand, that's a tribute. They were - and are - such sarcastically engaging characters that only a dour party pooper could seriously object to stepping out with them.
They're still looking mighty fine as they go about their business defending the galaxy from alien SFX supremo Rick Baker's ooky, many-tentacled, many-toothed thingies (being humanoid-centric is not a charge that can be levelled at this latex-dependent, wondrously visualised sci-fi franchise).
On the other hand, the decidedly sketchy script is what you'd expect from a more rushed job. It's as if all those other films Smith and Jones have made in the meantime - and the threatened Hollywood strikes that postponed production further - had not given the undeniably clever Sonnenfeld enough time to develop anything more than a bizarre combination of wit, encores of japes from the original film, and some faintly desperate silliness.
Perhaps that is asking too much. As sequels go, this is never less than cute; although we do find it slightly embarrassing that Frank the Pug (promoted from his previous diplomatic status to Jay's latest partner) sitting in the car singing - oh, you've guessed - Who Let The Dogs Out? should make us giggle quite so much as it does.
This is not to suggest there aren't some superbly ridiculous and wickedly twisted jests: a 600-foot subway-swallowing worm named Jeffrey; the return of the large-living 'Worm Guys'; Kay's working environment at the U.S. Post Office. And when our men follow the cryptic trail of clues Kay left for himself, in case he forgot where he put the Light Of Zartha, there's a quite fantastic, sensationally funny find in a train station locker.
It also ends on a brilliant sight gag that's as philosophically unnerving as the original film's punchline. Jones and Smith (and the always welcome Torn as unflappable Zed) are naturally the most fun. As for the rest, Flynn Boyle disproves the Duchess Of Windsor's infamous dictate that you can never be too thin, but gives suitably camp seductive villainy to her monster in the borrowed form of a lingerie model.
Head-sprouting Jeebs, the talking dog and the chain-smoking, martini-swilling Worm Guys do their things (again). But the tentative romance between lonely Jay and waitress- witness Laura is a non-starter; not surprising, really, given the hectic under-90-minutes-including-the-lengthy-credits remit, during which the rather more pressing matters of foiling Serleena's MIB HQ hostage siege and saving the Earth unfurl.
