DP: Multi-screens - but still no multi-choice; Men in Black II (Cert PG): stars Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones; director Barry Sonnenfeld. 88 mins. Rating ***.

THERE is just one new movie getting a commercial release in the region this week. Just one!

It seems amazing when there are so many multi-screen cinemas around and, by all reports, hundreds of unreleased films gathering dust on the shelf.

Of course cinemas need to make money and Men In Black II is obviously out there to make money. But there are other films released this week, admittedly not all commercial - and two are in a foreign language - but with audiences who might like to see them.

There is Brenda Blethyn and Emily Mortimer in Lovely & Amazing, a film about a mother and her daugh-ters; Lost In La Mancha, a documen-tary about Terry Gilliam's disasterous attempt to make a Don Quixote film (it was never completed); Platform, a much-acclaimed film about a touring performance group in China; and Time of Favor, an Israeli film about tensions on the West Bank.

Surely the smaller screens in the big complexes could accommodate one of these, if not all?

It's a question I have asked before but, so far, without an answer.

So instead we have just the ``big'' film all over the place, Men In Black II.

This is a rather delayed sequel to Men in Black, a film released five years ago, which did pretty good box office.

It was based on a short-lived comic strip that focused on the myth of a team of men in black suits and black glasses whose secret job it was to monitor alien activity on earth.

Tommy Lee Jones as K and Will Smith as J were two of the men in question and developed a good double act as they saved the universe. With a lot of wise-cracking lines, unusual special effects and several surprises, it was an original and lively film deserving its success.

Men in Black II is a horse of a different colour (as they say in The Wizard of Oz). The originality is no longer there, the surprises few and the humour forced rather than witty.

What's more, the story is (for me, at least) difficult to follow.

There is an attempt to simplify it with a spoof television documentary presented by Peter Graves (from the Mission: Impossible television series). Using recreations in B-film style, he tells of the myth of alien invasions including one in which a creature (disguised as a beautiful woman) arrives seeking The Light of Zarda in order to achieve world or possibly universal domination. She was sent packing by the Men in Black who hid the artefact she was after.

Of course, it was all true! Some years later, the same alien arrives back on earth (played by the delightful Lara Flynn Boyle in her underwear) accompanied by a henchman with two heads, one smaller than the other. She is after the Light again.

Smith is now working alone and on the trail of a monster worm that lives in the subway, chewing up trains. He manages to save a train and using some wand-like thing makes all the passengers who witnessed it forget what they saw.

Meanwhile Boyle and henchman (the two-headed Johnny Knoxville) arrive at a pizza parlour to quiz the owner about the Light. It seems he knows something and - as we are soon to realise - he too is an alien.

A waitress played by Rosario Dawson witnesses the bizarre events that follow and is soon quizzed by Smith - who is so smitten that he fails to wipe her memory with his wand.

His old partner Tommy Lee Jones is the man who knows all about alien Boyle and he HAS had his memory wiped - and is working in a small post office.

Soon the two Men in Black are back in action again to foil Doyle's plans.

The plot may not be important as it seems simply an excuse to open the special effects bag. This time, there are just too many of them.

Practically every character on screen is an alien with all sort of peculiarities, spiky heads, several legs, giant eyes, scaly bodies. The list is endless.

Michael Jackson also pops up in a cameo role, not as an alien as you might suspect, but as a would-be Man in Black.

The cigarette-smoking worms from the previous film are also back, this time helping our heroes or occasionally hindering them.

Smith also has a talking pug dog along for the ride, an amusing creature, which, however, outstays its welcome after a while.

And that's the problem - the film has alien creature overload to the extent that you feel you are watching a computer-animated comedy rather than a regular movie. Smith and Jones do their work ably enough but there are times when they look quite desperate, not knowing if they are in a comedy or a sci-fi drama. Generally, it is the former.

With so many creatures, it is difficult to feel sympathy let alone empathy with anyone or thing on screen.

Instead, what you get is a visual ideas-fest which might keep the eyes popping for a while. But even at a miserly 88 mins, Men in Black II becomes too much too early.

CAPTION(S):

THEY'RE BACK: Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith in Men in Black II