Review - Men in Black 3

MIB 3 is A-OK, but just OK

Here come the Men in Black….galaxy defenders…..

Ok, so the Will Smith song, still is front and center in my head as I sit down for this go around with Agent J (Will Smith) and Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones). We know they are defending against aliens that are not here to help us. We know that they are the best in the business. But are they ready to go up against Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement)?

Boris the Animal, or just Boris as he prefers, was put in prison years earlier courtesy of Agent K. Now, Boris has found a way out of the special prison that housed him and made the journey back to New York to settle the score with K and launch a massive invasion of Earth.

It will take a journey back to 1969 and an attempt to kill Boris then, to prevent the invasion of the current day. So K will journey back to try to take care of business once and for all. But after the results seem ominous, J will go back even earlier to try and change the fate of K – who did I mention…is now played by Josh Brolin? Can he be successful? Or is Earth about to end?

Something about previous Men in Black films, especially the first film some 15 years ago. There was a bit of a snap to what went on. A nice mix of comedy and action along with one of the most bankable summer stars there has been. Now, with MIB 3, that snap seems to be MIA. Maybe it’s just my love of the alphabet soup of letters in the movie, but although MIB 3 was not DOA, it certainly underwhelmed what I had hoped for.

The bright spot here was the performance of Brolin as the “young” agent K. He truly had Tommy Lee Jones down to every intonation and inflection. Smith shows a bit of his rust, having not done a film in over 3 years, but he still is a larger than life personality.

I felt the back and forth with the time travel and what might happen was just messy in execution. I found myself too concerned with trying to follow the story and didn’t let myself go to enjoy the creatures that returned.

Something just felt amiss throughout MIB 3 as the attempt to recapture that feeling felt a bit musty and out of sync. Still, although I felt underwhelmed, it’s not an awful popcorn film. Fans will still enjoy most of it, even if Will Smith doesn’t make the soundtrack this time around. I settled on an…A, B, C+ plus for MIB 3…P out.

C+

Men in Black III

Columbia Pictures

Director: Barry Sonnenfeld

Cast: Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Jemaine Clement, Emma Thompson, Alice Eve

Rating: PG-13 for sci-fi action violence, and brief suggestive content.

Runtime: 1 hour 43 minutes