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Five years is entirely too long to wait for a sequel to a movie as frothy as Men in Black, no matter how crowd-pleasing and briskly original it seemed way back in 1997. Doggedly if belatedly sequelizing his sleeper hit--if one could call a high-concept, FX-riddled, big-budget summer blockbuster a "sleeper" anything--director Barry Sonnenfeld follows up the original's snappy but unmemorable frivolity with Men in Black II's not-so-secret weapon: repetition.

Once more, supercool Agent Jay (Will Smith) teams up with deadpan Agent Kay (Tommy Lee Jones) after Jay saves his retired partner from a terrible fate--working in a post office in the sleepy seaside hamlet of Truro, Mass. Kay's memory was erased, or "neuralized" (an easy way for agents who assist in the immigration of extraterrestrial beings to keep earthlings from asking too many nosy questions), at the end of the first film. Jay has to find a way to reverse the effects so that Kay can recall some select events from early in his career, which may be relevant in putting a stop to the dastardly interplanetary-domination plans of Serleena (Lara Flynn Boyle, blasé in her treachery), a shape-shifting extraterrestrial whose earthly form--a Victoria's Secret model--spontaneously erupts with a tangle of choking tentacles. (Gasp--a chick with dicks!)

Not only is the plot a rehashing of the original (two supersecret agents with pleasantly crackling chemistry unite to save the world . . . again), but Sonnenfeld can't seem to refrain from resorting to the same shots and visual setups over and over again. There's no shot he loves more than zooming in uncomfortably close up on a solitary figure smack-dab in the center of the screen. Arguably, such consistency heralds directorial style, but here the lack of spontaneity just drives the film into the ground.

Sonnenfeld isn't entirely to blame for the derivativeness of this occasionally diverting sequel. Screenwriters Robert Gordon (Galaxy Quest) and Barry Fanaro (Kingpin) are responsible for the recap of gags from the first film, some of which connect (a pug who sings!) and some of which don't (civil servants and freaky celebs are--surprise!--aliens in disguise). Regardless, I never want to see Michael Jackson's wan, pinched mug in 1:85:1 aspect ratio again.