Men in Black (1997 film)

"You sold a reverberating carbonizer with mutate capacity to an unlicensed cephalopoid, Jeebs, you piece of...!"

"[To Jeebs] I want you on the next transport off this rock, or I'm gonna shoot you where it don't grow back."

"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it."

"1,500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was the center of the universe. 500 years ago, everybody knew that the Earth was flat. And 15 minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow."

"That is a lot of fun, it's a universal translator. We're not even supposed to have it, and I'll tell you why: human thought is so primitive, it's looked upon as an infectious disease in some of the better galaxies. That kind of makes you proud, doesn't it?"

"[After J accidentally activates a device that causes havoc around the headquarters] This thing caused the 1977 New York blackout. Practical joke by the Great Attractor. He thought it was funny as hell."

"Imagine a giant cockroach, with unlimited strength, a massive inferiority complex, and a real short temper, is tear-assing around Manhattan island in a brand new Edgar suit. That sound like fun?"

"[To Beatrice] No, ma'am. We at the FBI do not have a sense of humor we're aware of."

"[When goading the bug into eating him] Hey! Hey, bug! Wait a minute, I'm talking to you. You know how many of your kind I've swatted with a newspaper? You're nothing but a smear on the sports page to me, you slimy, gut-sucking intestinal parasite! Eat me! EAT ME!!!"

"You see this?! Huh?! NYPD! Means I will knock your punk-ass down!"

"You trying to catch a beat-down, huh?!"

"[to Agent K, while wearing his suit for the first time] You know what the difference is between you and me? I make this look good."

"HEY! OLD GUYS! Do those still work?"

"I hate the living."

"[examining Rosenberg's corpse] Oh, my God! [laughs] Whoa, buddy, what are you?"

"[to J and K, after blowing up the bug] Interesting job you guys have."

"[Regrowing his head after K has blown it off] You insensitive prick! Do you have any idea how much that stings?"

"[after being screamed at by K for selling a reverberating carbonizer with mutate capacity to an unlicensed cephalopoid] He looked alright to me!"

"[voiceover, as Edwards becomes Agent J] You will dress only in attire specially sanctioned by MIB Special Services. You'll conform to the identity we give you, eat where we tell you, live where we tell you. From now on, you'll have no identifying marks of any kind. You will not stand out in any way. Your entire image is crafted to leave no lasting memory with anyone you encounter. You are a rumor, recognizable only as déjà vu and dismissed just as quickly. You don't exist; you were never even born. Anonymity is your name, silence your native tongue. You are no longer part of the System. You are above the System. Over it. Beyond it. We're "them". We're "they". We are the Men in Black."

"We're not hosting an intergalactic kegger down here."

"The twins keep us on Centaurian time, standard 37-hour day. Give it a few months. You'll get used to it. Or you'll have a psychotic episode."

"Containment may be a moot point, old friend. The exodus continues. It's like the party's over and the last one to leave gets stuck with the check."

"[Screaming at the worms as they desert their posts] YOU SORRY LITTLE INGRATES!"

""Men in Black," the second Will-Smith-versus-the- aliens picture, is a high- tech comedy, more along the lines of a tight little action movie than a bona fide blockbuster. It was the smallest of the big summer films, the most slickly made -- and the most old-fashioned. Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, "Men in Black" has the gloss and the wit of Sonnenfeld's other comedies ("Get Shorty," "The Addams Family"). Sonnenfeld uses odd angles and wide lenses to view the action with a sardonic eye, as if the onscreen events were a joke between director and audience. But if "Men in Black" is a joke, who's the joke on?"

"[T]he Men in Black aren't merry entrepreneurs, like the Ghostbusters. They're cold-blooded bureaucrats whose job is to control and suppress information."

"Men in Black came out just as digital effects were starting to rise to prominence and here they look very, very dated in almost every single shot. They almost feel like you could pause the movie, stick your hand onto the screen, and pull them off like a sticker. It’s that bad. On the other hand, that’s also because the film uses those effects so ambitiously. Men in Black uses full, CGI characters years before Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace or The Lord of the Rings did (though they were created differently). So although the effects date the film poorly, it’s also a little bit charming, since everything else in the movie works so well. Put all of that together and 1997's Men in Black today looks, in 2019, like the Missing Link of Hollywood blockbusters. A film that bridges the gap between the old and the new. It blends the legendary Amblin tone of the ‘80s with the soon-to-be-prevalent visual effects of the 2000s, under the umbrella of a comic book adaptation that would spawn a larger franchise, which is the kind of thing movie studios dream of."

"What would be the first question to ask a space alien newly arrived on planet Earth? The dryly clever Men in Black has a novel answer: Carrying any fruits or vegetables? This, you see, is business as usual for the film's top-secret police and immigration authorities, dapper black-suited types who keep tabs on stray spacelings in the New York area. There are a lot of these visitors. They come in all shapes and sizes. Some tote cartons of Marlboros for the trip back home."

"There's a jarring discrepancy between the film's plot, which tosses around the fate of galaxies yet still manages to be inconsequential, and its imposing scale. Certain sets, like the pawnshop lighted by Edward Hopper and the vast Eero Saarinen-inspired Men in Black headquarters, are studied and elegant to the point of distraction. Yet with its production design by Bo Welch (Edward Scissorhands, A Little Princess), one of the enormously talented contributors to the film's overall look, Men in Black even makes its morgue inviting. (Scenes there feature Linda Fiorentino, who deftly underplays the city's deputy medical examiner and certainly belongs in the same movie with the supremely unruffled, tacitly hilarious Mr. Jones.) The film's technical team reflects exceptional stylistic harmony. Mr. Sonnenfeld, the cinematographer on the early Coen brothers films, invokes the eccentric clarity of their work and that of Tim Burton (whose usual composer, Danny Elfman, contributes some black magic to the score). Mr. Welch also designed Mr. Burton's Beetlejuice, while Rick Baker's amazing special makeup effects are on the same weird wavelength. Industrial Light and Magic deserves star billing in a film with approximately 250 visual effects shots. (Jurassic Park had 60.) The tricks don't share much continuity, but they can rock Mr. Smith in the tentacle of a space squid or make the Men in Blackmobile fly through the Midtown Tunnel upside down. A wonderfully playful coda will send you home with a smile."

"Our Flick of the Week is the often hilarious "Men in Black," a smart, funny and hip adventure film in a summer of car wrecks and explosions."

"In addition to a top-flight cast (Rip Torn is the big boss of the MIB), the behind-the-scenes talent involved in "Men in Black" is first-rate. Bo Welch, a three-time Academy Award-nominated production designer, has created an MIB headquarters and research facility that is a hilarious mix of man, alien and machine. Ric Baker is the master of movie creatures. And director Barry Sonnenfield ("The Addams Family"), a former cinematographer, makes every shot look great. But if I had to pick the one person most responsible for the success of "Men in Black" it would be writer Ed Solomon, who invests all of his major characters with brains."

"“I always felt like the secret to Men in Black was not the sunglasses and the big guns and the coolness, and the other surface level coolness of it,” Solomon says. “I always thought the secret of Men in Black was the generosity of spirit… It was the attitude of the film and its relationship to the audience, which was more of a ‘Hey, everyone check this out, come join us on this journey. Take a look into this world that other people don’t know exists. Let’s go in it together.”"

"“It seems to me like the sequels weren’t dealing with the humanity of the [first] movie,” Solomon says. “The other thing that I really loved in writing the first Men in Black was that it really was about how we humans think we’re so important, but in fact we don’t know anything that’s really going on. And so that was a very human experience, and to me, the story of Men in Black was about a cocky human being who gets humbled and realizes that he ain’t even close to the center of the universe. In fact, the universe, the world, what’s important, is nothing that he ever thought about. Reality isn’t anything like he ever thought. It’s a humbling blow. It’s a very human experience.” Solomon continues, “So I just don’t know. I didn’t get that experience watching the sequels. I think their priorities were slightly different and, I’m not an expert on why a movie works or doesn’t. Sometimes, I’ll think something’s going to be a giant hit and it isn’t, and vice versa. I can’t say for sure, all I can say is that during my own personal experience of writing [Men in Black] that was what was important, and I didn’t get those elements as much from the other movies. That was my own takeaway from being the writer of the first and an audience member of the others.” Still, he’s quick to add that even if he didn’t think the sequels worked as a whole, there were still things to like. “I enjoyed parts of all of them. They just weren’t the way I would have done it, but I didn’t have the opportunity because I wasn’t working on them.” That might be so, but if and when someone else takes a crack at MIB, perhaps these are insights worth sitting on a park bench and appreciating here."

"“Men in Black” is set in New York at the suggestion of its director, a native son, and that sets up inventive use of such landmarks as the Guggenheim Museum, the old World’s Fair grounds in Queens and the Battery Park vent room for the Holland Tunnel, plus the expected jokes about what percentage of cabbies are not of this Earth. Hard to ignore because it’s partly unexpected is the film’s slime factor. “Men in Black” has periodic moments of gross-out humor that will not be to everyone’s taste, and when Edgar the invader finally reveals himself, he turns out to be more disturbing and off-putting than the film’s genial tone would have you expect. But mostly what you get with “Men in Black” is the opportunity to spend some quality time with the Kings of Cool in a world where inconvenient memories get erased and supermarket tabloids offer the most reliable alien tips. It’s not the traditional world where only the bad guys wore black, but you but you already knew that, didn’t you?"

"Tommy Lee Jones as Kevin Brown / Agent K"

"Will Smith as James Darrell Edwards III / Agent J"

"Vincent D'Onofrio as Edgar the Bug"

"Linda Fiorentino as Dr. Laurel Weaver / Agent L"

"Rip Torn as Chief Zed"

"Tony Shalhoub as Jack Jeebs"

"Siobhan Fallon Hogan as Beatrice"

"Mike Nussbaum as Gentle Rosenberg"

"Jon Gries as Van Driver"

"Sergio Calderón as Jose"

"Carel Struycken as Arquillian"

"Fredric Lehne as INS Agent Janus"

"Kent Faulcon as 2nd Lt. Jake Jensen"

"Richard Hamilton as Agent D"

"David Cross as Newton the Morgue Attendant"

"Tim Blaney as Frank the Pug (voice)"

"Scottie Ray as Mikey and additional alien voices"