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Come on: you're glad there's a Tommy Lee Jones. We're glad there's a Tommy Lee Jones. Everyone's glad there's a Tommy Lee Jones! I jones, you jones, we all jones for Tommy Lee Jones!
Okay, we weren't so glad when we saw him in Volcano or Natural Born Killers or Batman Forever, when he chowed down on the scenery like a contestant on The Glutton Bowl.
But for the most part, we're glad there's a Tommy Lee Jones. And America, too, is glad, as evidenced by the boffo box-office take of Men in Black II. And don't let Will Smith take all the credit. Sure, when you team Smith with Tommy Lee Jones, crowds snake around the block. But team Smith with Kevin Kline, and crowds sneak around the block, to another theater, to watch another movie that's not called Wild, Wild West.
Yes, the results are in and America is sweet on Tommy Lee Jones. But why is that? Loath as we are to point this out, Jones is no matinee idol. A sampling of actual descriptions from articles on the actor include the phrases "rugged," "craggy" or "not exactly smooth-faced." (Ouch.) Or consider this assessment from Leonard Maltin: "Dark, pockmarked, but handsome in a sinister way." Assumedly, this was meant as a compliment, but it's not exactly something you'd find written in a personals ad: "SWM, professional, handsome in a sinister way."
So what's the appeal of Jones? Study his biggest hits -- Men in Black, The Fugitive, Double Jeopardy -- as we have, and it will become obvious to you, as it has to us. He's America's favourite sidekick. Pair him with Will Smith, Ashley Judd, Harrison Ford, or Wesley Snipes, and he's gold. Leave him on his own, and he's Cobb.
Of course, Jones isn't exactly classic sidekick material. Sidekicks are supposed to be stupid, deferential, and dimwitted: you know, Robin to Batman, Tonto to the Lone Ranger, or Watson to Sherlock Holmes. Jones is the opposite of all that. He's gruff, authoritarian, and stern. He doesn't ask the questions, he answers them. And he's the one making sure that everything goes smoothly and no one gets out of control. Wait a second! He's not America's favourite sidekick at all! He's America's favourite chaperone!
That makes sense, doesn't it? After all, who's always turning up to watch over the cocksure neophytes? Tommy Lee Jones! And who helps steer the wrongfully accused in their foolhardy quests for justice? Tommy Lee Jones! And who videotaped sex with his wife, then beat her up, then gave her a deadly liver disease? Tommy Lee!
Jones isn't an actor; he's a professional voice of reason. There he is, the skeptical mentor, surveying his charges with a cocked eyebrow and a cutting quip. And the people he's paired up with never have a clue as to what they're doing. Sure, Ashley Judd really, really wants to kill her loathsome husband in Double Jeopardy, but she can't get anything accomplished without letting Tommy Lee Jones guide her along with his dulcet drawl. In Men in Black, Smith is a raw recruit whom Jones shepherds into maturity. Even Harrison Ford needs Jones's intercessions in order to complete his mission of holy vengeance. As sidekicks go, Jones isn't Tonto, he's Jiminy Cricket, riding the shoulders of his charges and nudging them along the proper path.
And, clearly, this is how we, the moviegoing public, best appreciate him: not as the hero, or as the villain, but as a comforting force whose presence assures us that things won't go too far off the rails. This also explains why, when they made U.S. Marshals, that strange and unnecessary sequel to The Fugitive, they decided to use the exact same plot as The Fugitive. In U.S. Marshals, Jones also gallops off after a wrongfully accused man, only to recognize the man's innocence and become his ally. This time, though, the man was Wesley Snipes. (At least Die Hard II had the creativity to relocate to an airport. The Fugitive sequel might as well have been called Fugitive II: This Time He's Black. Or U.S. Marshals, Starring Blackison Ford. Or The Fugitive 2: Now With Extra Black Guy!)
This also points out the other interesting thing about Jones: nowadays, he never gets paired up with old white dudes like himself, or Harrison Ford. Now it's always young black guys or crazy, homicidal women. (Okay, there was Space Cowboys, or as we like to call it, Depends in Space. Or Battlestar Adult-Diaperstica. Or Starship Poopers.)
Maybe this is just Hollywood sowing the oats of its demographic appeal as widely as possible: you know, lure in the black people and the white people, the kids and the grown-ups, the rap fans and the fans of cranky old baseball players from the 1920s. But if Jones is there to provide a comforting presence, it's worth asking what anxieties it is that he's comforting us against. A cynic might even suggest that Jones gets partnered with these kind of people -- i.e., crazy women people and lethal black people -- because they are the kinds of people who, in Hollywood's eyes, are most in need of a chaperone. Actually, the cynic might try to suggest that, but we'd beat him and chase him off, for we have no truck with cynics!
You can't blame Jones for gobbling up all the roles of the old white guy who befriends the wronged wife, or rolls his eyes at his young black partner's sassy outbursts. Somebody has to be the vice-principal of Hollywood, keeping an eye on the rowdy kids, and if Jones doesn't do it, Anthony Hopkins will, and not half as well, as he proved in Bad Company. Jones, on the other hand, is really good at that stuff. And if he isn't kept busy, he gets too much time on his hands and breaks into the makeup trailer and greases his hair up all funny and next thing you know it's Natural Born Killers all over again, and nobody wants that.
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