The idea of a secret agency regulating potentially dangerous alien visitors seems a little edgier today than it did back in 1997, when Men in Black first came out. Funnier, too. Barry Sonnenfeld has apparently learned from his mistakes in Wild, Wild West and Big Trouble, for he turns out a sequel that is tauter, sharper, and more blithely hilarious than the original, achieving near-surreal moments worthy of an inspired Terry Gilliam while confirming the visual imaginativeness he demonstrated in The Addams Family and the comic timing of his Get Shorty.

And the story? Agent Jay (Will Smith), now top dog for Men in Black since the retirement of Agent Kay (Tommy Lee Jones), summons his former mentor to help battle Serleena (Lara Flynn Boyle), an evil extra-terrestrial who looks like a mile of tangled garden hose when she doesn’t look like a Victoria’s Secret model. Trouble is, Kay has been "neuralized" — flashed with a blue light that’s eliminated his memory and replaced it with a phony identity as a Truro postal worker. So like Matt Damon’s character in The Bourne Identity, he spends much of the film trying to find out who he is in the midst of rampaging Chinballians and dogs who sing "I Will Survive." Sonnenfeld overflows the edges and background of the frame with sight and sound gags that make the film into a Mad magazine cartoon, and he gives Jones’s slow burn and Smith’s dithering meltdowns more time to develop. Then there’s the racy suggestion that things — not just what’s out there but memory and identity as well — are not what they seem. And what’s with the Statue of Liberty’s torch serving as the instrument of mass amnesia? Sure, Columbia got millions in advertising tie-ins with Verizon, Burger King, and Mercedes-Benz, but Men in Black II might just be the most subversive comedy of the summer. (88 minutes)