Smith Month - Mini Review: Men in Black 3

It was only about 8 years late, but we finally got a second Men in Black sequel, does it improve on areas that were lacking in the last movie? Well, with a 68% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and making enough money to surpass the previous film, it certainly seems things are back on track, but are they? Let’s take a look.

J and K have continued their partnership, now into its 14^th year but when a villain called Boris the Animal escapes prison and has his eyes on K for taking his arm 40 years ago, he goes back in time to kill him before he does so. J somehow still remembers him because of poorly explained and frankly quite stupid reasons. And since he’s the only one who does, it’s up to him to travel back in time and save him.

Yup, there’s time travel in the Men in Black Universe now… I’m not sure how I feel about it, on one hand, it’s not far beyond the realms of plausibility given the nature of the premise but time travel in and of itself does open the floodgates for plot-holes and yup, there are paradoxes aplenty in this one. I’ve said before that a time travel story will have some level of paradox in it because of it’s very nature. It requires the upmost care and clever writing to make it work without some form of problem. The writing in Men in Black has never been that clever.

Let’s talk about Josh Brolin, we’ll soon be seeing him play Thanos in Infinity War but before then he played a fantastic Young Tommy Lee Jones. He’s still street-wise, assertive of his knowledge, snarky and manipulative at times but he’s a little less closed off than his counterpart in the present. It’s a great mystery what happened to change him, but it’s probably for the best that it stays that way. He and Will Smith have a funny dynamic that’s similar but different to the Will Smith/Tommy Lee Jones dynamic from the first 2 movies

This movie does tone down the comic relief and thank god for that! Most of the characters that provided comic relief in the second movie are either absent or dead, there are still some one-joke comic relief moments which are fine, plus there’s Griffin, an alien with Clairvoyant powers. I like Griffin. Sure, there’s a stupid moment where he fails to foresee his own kidnapping but he’s funny, quirky and actually useful, providing one of the big Mcguffins of the movie, and his clairvoyant powers do provide some useful intel, and help the pair out of a couple of jams.

I haven’t really mentioned Boris himself and here I think there is some wasted opportunity. The two Borises only interact once, and the dialogue, which it may get a laugh didn’t really change a lot of what was about to happen. There was an interesting fight between J and older Boris (oh yeah, we never see them fighting together, possibly a budget thing) but it’s another plot-hole with how he’s defeated.

There were subtle hints in this movie about J’s daddy issues, which haven’t really come in any of the previous movies. Turns out his dad is general Luke Cage, well, the actor who plays him anyway. He dies near the end of the movie and it’s up to K to keep an eye on him, which means certain events may have occurred differently in the present.

Whilst a marked improvement over the last movie, it maintains a dumb plot, still it counterbalances that with less unfunny comic relief, more genuine laughs and legitimate character moments, with strong performances throughout

Rating 70/100