Movie Review - Men in Black 3

Men in Black 3 (2012)

Starring Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Jemaine Clement, Michael Stuhlbarg, Alice Eve, and Emma Thompson

Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld

It's been years since I've seen either of the first two Men in Black movies, but I remember finding them a bit better than typical action comedies.  They weren't anything fantastic, but I at least recall there being a slight enjoyment stemming from them (and if that isn't the case, at least they're remembered that way for their sake).  None of that sense of joie de vivre is present in Men in Black 3, a surprisingly joyless affair without any laughs and lacking either big or small action sequences to provide a sense of excitement.  This third movie just slogs along going nowhere in particular.

Men in Black 3 begins in the present day with alien outlaw Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) escaping from his lunar prison and traveling back down to Earth to enact revenge on the man who put him away and blew off his arm in the process -- Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones).  Boris finds a time machine and goes back to the 1969 day before he lost his arm and was captured in order to kill Agent K.  Somehow or another, K "rids" the world of everything that K himself caused since that fateful day so when K's partner Agent J (Will Smith) wakes up in the modern world, he is told that K died back in 1969.  [Why this has to happen, I'm not sure..]  J then goes back in time to try and help K kill Boris (and help past K not be killed by the modern-day Boris) rather than simply capture him in order to save the planet from Boris's modern day nastiness.

Confused?  Yeah, I was, too.  There's no easy way to write the summary in a way that makes sense because the film doesn't really attempt to make a whole lot of sense itself.  Will Smith attempts to try and work his smooth-talking charisma, but his charming persona as J can't win over the audience here because the audience is left flabbergasted at the foolishness of the plot.  With the film taking place mostly in the past, Tommy Lee Jones sits on the wayside for nearly all of the film with Josh Brolin doing an impressive impersonation of a young 1969 version of Agent K, and although Brolin is a bright spot, the allure of the impression wears off after a few minutes.

With that, I'm going to draw this shoddily written review to a close.  When I can't find a way to explain a summary of a movie, I'm turned off from writing my opinion about it.  Just know that Men in Black 3 is the worst of the bunch in this series.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+