"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."