SummaryIn Men in Black 3, Agents J and K are back... in time. J has seen some inexplicable things in his 15 years with the Men in Black, but nothing, not even aliens, perplexes him as much as his wry, reticent partner. But when K's life and the fate of the planet are put at stake, Agent J will have to travel back in time to put things right. J ...
SummaryIn Men in Black 3, Agents J and K are back... in time. J has seen some inexplicable things in his 15 years with the Men in Black, but nothing, not even aliens, perplexes him as much as his wry, reticent partner. But when K's life and the fate of the planet are put at stake, Agent J will have to travel back in time to put things right. J ...
MIB3 is one giant leap for mankind because Josh Brolin shows up to play the younger Agent K. And he just nails the feat, triumphantly creating a riff on/homage to the Tommy Lee Jones-ness of K that goes much deeper (and funnier) than a simple imitation of drawl and speech patterns.
My favorite MIB movie. Josh Brolin nails it as a young Tommy Lee Jones. The ending is also pretty heartwarming, which I wasn't expecting when I first saw this.
In a summer hardly starved of comic-book properties, this redundant extension of a series that ran out of gas a decade ago doesn't need a neuralyzer to be forgettable.
one of the best movies of all time. It was funny interesting and really really good It's one of my favorite movies of all times and I like it very much
Never ask a question you don't want to know the answer to, we're told a couple of times in "Men in Black III."
It sounds like good advice, yet I can't help myself. I have to ask: Why did they make this movie? The original, released in 1997, was a terrifically fun sci-fi comedy, with the laconic Tommy Lee Jones and the ebullient Will Smith teaming as agents of a secret organization that keeps Earth safe from bad aliens (and ensures the good ones stay safe, as well). The confirmation that your weird grade-school teacher was from another planet alone made it worthwhile.
The 2002 sequel ... not so much. So 10 years later, was there a clamor for a third installment? If there was, I missed it.
The good news is that it's better than the second "Men in Black." The bad news is: not all that much. There are a couple of clever ideas, a few funny moments, a wealth of computer-generated special effects. But it's hollow at its core, and the asides have lost some of their spark. So Lady Gaga is an alien living on Earth?
Duh.
Agent J (Smith) and Agent K (Jones) are still partners, still cleaning up alien messes, still wiping witnesses' memories clean so that the general population remains unaware of what's really going on. But J is growing tired of K's silent act. A staleness has set in, which seems like a dangerous path for director Barry Sonnenfeld to travel, given the context.
Bigger trouble is brewing. On a prison whose security is so maximum it's located on the moon, Boris the Animal (Jermaine Clement from "Flight of the Conchords," unrecognizable) escapes, in about as dumb a way as possible. He is a rather disgusting creature -- a deadly little spiderlike thing lives inside his hand, and Boris shoots what seems to be an inexhaustible supply of dartlike weapons out of his hand, as well (crowded in there). Boris has a score to settle with K, who put him away 40 years ago and shot off his arm.
Boris changes all that, going back in time and killing the young K in 1969. Only J realizes this at first, but eventually he convinces his new boss, O (Emma Thompson, of all people), that something is amiss. (A craving for chocolate milk is key, which tells you the level of sophistication at work here.) So J has to travel back in time to the day before, to prevent Boris from killing K, because if he doesn't, an alien invasion, which has already begun will wipe out ... oh forget it. You get the idea. It's all an excuse to send J back to the '60s to set up the film's best joke -- Josh Brolin playing the young Agent K.
Brolin nails it. It's not just mimicry; his Agent K, while still stone-faced and withdrawn, is a little happier than the later model, and it intrigues J. What happened to you to change you, he asks several times? To which K replies, good naturedly, "I don't know. It hasn't happened yet."
Aside from that joke, Sonnenfeld also uses the premise to place the modern J in the '60s and, presumably, laugh at the results. A factory turns out to be THE Factory, and Andy Warhol (Bill Hader) comes in for the MiB treatment (though not in ways you would expect). Michael Stuhlbarg is sweetly charming as an alien who can not only see the future, but all possible versions of it. ("It's a pain in the ass," he says of the gift.)
Smith and Brolin have a decent chemistry, and the final showdown between the agents and Boris, while a little reckless and all over the place, scores some points for incorporating the launch of Apollo 11. There is also an attempt at some emotional payoff, though it throws the whole space-time continuum thing into question (I think; that stuff is always so hard to follow).
"Men in Black III" isn't bad, certainly not as bad as it might have been. But it's not exactly good, either. Mostly, it's something else: unnecessary.
Men in Black III is a decent movie. It's probably the best of the trilogy, finishing narrowly ahead of the original and totally eclipsing the lackluster sequel. Josh Brolin is great as younger K and is totally convincing. It's still not an essential movie but it's fun popcorn fluff.
The problem with some franchises is that the studios don't know when it's time to quit. The lackluster nature of Men in Black II should have been a hint to Sony that the Men in Black series had run its course. Now, at least ten years beyond the "sell by" date, along comes Men in Black III. This sequel is so lifeless and pointless that it moves beyond "unnecessary" into the realm of "unwanted" and "insulting." The public's lack of enthusiasm for this movie is matched only by the apparent disinterest evident in the production. Those who don't understand what it means for an actor to "sleepwalk" through a performance need only watch Men in Black III; there's no shortage of examples.
If there's a bright spot to be found in Men in Black III, it's Josh Brolin, whose dead-on impersonation of Tommy Lee Jones makes the real actor seem like an imposter. Brolin seems to be having fun, which is more than can be said about the people sitting in theater seats enduring this **** There's also something odd about Jones' make-up job. It's unclear whether it's intended to make him look older or younger. The actor is 65; we learn that K is supposedly 72. It makes no sense, however, that latex applications would be used to add seven years to Jones' age. The end result is that the actor looks like a waxwork from Madame Tussauds that has been left out in the sun too long and is starting to melt.
Visually, Men in Black III looks like it was made on a budget roughly equivalent to that of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. The CGI is awful, the "creature effects" are about 30 years out-of-date, and the 3-D is an abomination. It's inexplicable why anyone thought Men in Black III would be improved by the darkening and blurriness that accompanies a poor post-production conversion, but that's the case here. All the usual problems with inept 3-D are in evidence. (The company to do the work on Men in Black III is reportedly the same one that botched Clash of the Titans and The Green Lantern.) Still, considering the quality of the project, this isn't a case where it's better avoiding the surcharge and seeing the 2-D version; this is a case where it's better avoiding it in any D.
Most summers, there's a sequel that underperforms relative to expectations. My money is on Men in Black III for 2012. It's hard to imagine how any movie-goer could legitimately claim to be entertained by this mess. The action is sloppy and limited. The comedy is perfunctory. The lack of energy and craftsmanship is shocking. It's a poor option, even as a temporary diversion. (To add insult to injury, there is no post-credits Easter egg.) Men in Black III is to this franchise what Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was to that one. It's hard to be more definitive about how this movie experience plays out.
Disappointing in almost every respect, bad special effects, bad soundtrack, bad performances, bad history, in short almost everything wrong, perhaps saved by their shared sense of humor that you produced a laugh at least one occasion. otherwise this film follows the rule that if a series is "good", the trilogy is the worst thing you can do.