Men in Black 3 (2012)

Review: written Dec 2012

Never too late for some more MIB

It's been about ten years now since the last MIB, and I can't say I was sitting at home thinking - I must have another one.. and yet, here it is, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. If anything, the gap since the last one and subsequent lowering of expectations has helped this one by delinking it somewhat from the first two. And that's probably a good thing, since while still a hoot to watch, this certainly has some unfavourable differences from its predecessors. Primarily, Tommy Lee Jones is missed. Even in his 5 minutes or so of screen time as K, he doesn't seem exactly `present'. This is compensated by having Josh Brolin do the best Tommy Lee Jones impression imaginable.. so perhaps I should take a quick moment to explain..

This is a time travel story. Present day, K is dropping hints about great secrets left to be discovered. K however is wiped out of existence, by an old nemesis escaping from prison, going back in time, and making sure most of K's career never happened. It's up to J to go back to the 60's and put things right, to save his partner, and almost incidentally, the planet. So Brolin is the younger K, and really does an outstanding job. The other missing element however, is the edge - the first two had some genuinely black humour which somehow seems softened round the edges in this one. Is the director Barry Sonnenfeld getting mellower with age? I'd like to hope that’s the case, rather than the alternative, that the writers just got lazier.

Those are minor quibbles, only happening because the first two (or at least the first) are much beloved.. but this really does work more than some of the critics would have you believe. If the time travelling element starts to get a little wrapped up in itself near the end, its ok, because at 106 minutes the pace is fast enough you don't really pause to notice or think about it. And the heart is provided this time by the new character Griffin, who is certainly likeable in his role as a being who is aware of multiple timelines. The 60's continues to be a gold mine of humour for cinema.. interacting with characters both real and fictional from the 60's adds a new element that could probably have been mined for more laughs, but gets it just right by not overegging the pudding. The `bad guy' Boris the Animal ("It's just Boris!") fills a required role without being either as menacing or as involving as his predecessors, but does whats needed to propel events.

All told - a welcome addition to the MIB series, and even if TLJ is missed, the other elements make this still a solid worthwhile watch.