Director Barry Sonnenfeld badly needed a hit after Wild Wild West and Big Trouble and so he went down the tried and tested route of making a sequel to his most popular film so far, the entertaining Men in Black (not a film that was exactly crying out for a sequel, but still). Also returning is composer Danny Elfman, writing the score in record time after completing work on Spiderman. (Elfman's going through an incredible run of box-office hits at the moment.)

The music for the first film was pretty mixed - Elfman gave it a great main theme and a lovely guitar theme for Tommy Lee Jones's character (and the finale was stunning) but the score didn't seem to gel together all that well. For the sequel, there aren't those standout moments, but the album plays consistently well from start to finish. It opens in bizarre fashion with an amusing lounge jazz piece that sounds like Henry Mancini, before the main theme from the first film takes over for much of the album - Elfman includes it far more in this film than its predecessor, but he doesn't just repeat it, he runs it through a series of interesting variations.

This is a much lighter, more comedic score than we are used to from Elfman in the last couple of years: there are very few real moments of action scoring. But a most welcome reprise from the first film is the guitar theme, which makes a great cameo in "K's Back". There's a very simple brass motif that runs through many of the tracks too, heard to best effect in "The Defence Begins". Perhaps not quite as good as its equivalent in its predecessor, "The Light" still makes for a thrilling and beautiful finale for the score (though there are three cues that follow it along with two songs - an "amusing" arrangement of "I Will Survive" and a "hideous" song by Will Smith which was written by no fewer than six people - I'm astonished that so many people with no evidence of musical talent could be found in the world, let alone cajoled into writing a song).

As with Spiderman before it, Elfman proves that he is the film composer most adept at incorporating modern percussion and synths into his otherwise-orchestral scores. Unlike most film composers, it doesn't sound like two worlds are colliding or one of the elements is simply pasted over the other, but he does it in a way that makes it sound natural and as if it's always been like that. These aren't just drum loops laid over repetitive string phrases, or using synthesised trumpets instead of real ones just for the hell of it: it's actually music. David Arnold, Hans Zimmer, etc - take note.

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