Cinema
Addicted to Love (15, selected cinemas) Men in Black (PG, selected cinemas)
Trapped in a stinker
Mark Steyn
If Addicted to Love has any kind of future, it's as a film-school textbook exam- ple of how to screw up a screwball comedy. Every Meg Ryan fan keeps hoping she'll recapture the perky, ditsy blonde of When Harry Met Sally; Matthew Broderick, on the other hand, is one of the most endearing actors of screen and stage, with a sheepish charm that works well with almost anybody — even with Jim Caney in The Cable Guy. Yet, as directed by Griffin Dunne, Ryan and Broderick set a new low in no-sparks sexual chemistry. Maybe it's the creepy concept: the two meet up to stalk their for- mer sweethearts, Ryan's ex- having taken up with Broderick's ex-. Or maybe it's that the screenplay is so contrived the creepi- ness is all you notice. Broderick has the forlorn air of one who knows he's trapped in a stinker; Ryan tries to compensate with a kind of desperate energy. There's better news from Barry Sonnen- feld's Men in Black. Somewhere in the 20 years between Jaws and Independence Day, any sense of genuine thrill disappeared from the summer blockbuster. Spielberg and his successors peddle a hokey, jokey terror — a high-tech version of a country fair's haunted castle: we 'ooh!' and `aah!', but are we scared by the threat to the plan- et or the rampaging Tyrannosaurus? Not a chance. Sonnenfeld seems to have taken this to its logical conclusion and come up with a postmodern summer blockbuster. The trailer, which has been running for months, suggested we were in for a rerun of last year's Independence Day: it had the same American opening — 4 July — and the same star — Will Smith. But chunks of the trailer's dialogue don't seem to be in the film itself, and what's there instead is as low-key and textured as Independence Day was gargantuan and generic. The story is a thin one — a bug lands in upstate New York, takes over the body of an ugly farmer and sets about its plan to destroy the planet. As the eponymous men-in- black, the Federal agents responsible for monitoring alien activity, Smith and Tommy Lee Jones wear shades and fire off one-liners.
Most of the American critics hailed it as a triumph of style, the subordination of such dated ingredients as plot, character, motivation to a hip Nineties attitude. Many drew attention to the Vaporiser, a device Jones uses to make people instantly forget everything they've seen, and then pointed out that the entire film has that effect. But I wonder. I like the minimal plot. Most space invader movies feel the need, even when they're not racing through space, to rush all over the planet — one minute we're in New York, then in Moscow, then in the desert, up a mountain, in an under- water research laboratory.
The premise of Men in Black is that, under an intergalactic treaty, the American government has been taking in space aliens as refugees and, in a kind of variation on the Witness Protection Programme, been placing them in new, unobtrusive identities. `Most of them are in Manhattan,' explains Jones to his new recruit, `just trying to make a living.' Cab drivers?' asks Smith. `Not as many as you think.' With the space monsters mostly confined to New York City, except for the odd excursion upstate, the film has the same genially local quality as a cop show — the aliens hang out in Greek restaurants, pawnshops, newsstands. Indeed, Sonnenfeld's film, though set in the Nineties, looks like a strange hybrid of Fifties sci-fi comics with old-time police series like Dragnet and The Naked City, in which foursquare, dark-suited, deadpan detectives pound their beat.
But the odd thing about Men in Black is that, for all its flippancy, it offers a better explanation of the unknown than films straining for profundity, like the forthcom- ing Carl Sagan adaptation Contact. So, for example, Tommy Lee Jones keeps in touch with alien activity by reading the National Enquirer and the other supermarket tabloids. When Smith looks sceptical, Jones tells him, 'Sure, read the New York Times. They get lucky sometimes.'
Huge television screens monitor the aliens living in America, among them Sylvester Stallone and Newt Gingrich. When Smith gets tired of Jones singing along to Elvis Presley's 'Promised Land' and points out that Elvis is dead, Jones says firmly, 'Elvis is not dead. He just went home.' In response to Smith's query as to how the agency is funded, Jones explains that they managed to find a commercial use for some of the things the aliens brought to earth with them — Vel- cro, microwave ovens, liposuction techniques.
All of this sounds more believable than most sci-fi. But, underneath all the clever- clever pop-culture references, the film is not without warmth. That's a tribute to the cast: the agents are obliged to have all their distinguishing characteristics removed, the supporting players have mostly had their memories wiped, yet, despite being almost literally blank sheets, Smith and Jones, as their names might suggest, emerge as plau- sible everymen.
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