7/10

I just saw Men In Black 3 in theaters and figured I’d write a quick review of it.  It’s pretty much spoiler-free.

To prepare for seeing it, I watched the first two movies the night before because I had actually never seen them before.  Honestly, I didn’t think much of them and I didn’t really understand why my friends loved them so much.  I guess it was a nostalgia thing.  But anyways, I got through those and expected the same from the third MiB.  But what I saw was much better!

I found that the first two movies were all about the plot of the movie; some evil aliens wants some special object and Agents K and J ( Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith) have to find it before they do to save the planet.  There was very little character development in either of them, both keeping both K and J as fairly static characters.  J was the wise-cracking young guy and K was the cranky, wise veteran.  They mixed it up a bit in the second but it was basically the same stuff.

But in the third one, while they still had a some-what interesting plot, they focused heavily on the awkward relationship of partners K and J.  The two, despite J’s trying, were not friends as he said K was “too tight.”  Well, when J travels back in time to stop an alien invasion, he meets a younger, very different K.  Played  by Josh Brolin, young K was kinder, more talkative and far more open about his personal life.  The movie let you see the real K, who for the first two movies was a closed book and I really enjoyed the change of pace from a total plot based story to a character driven story that actually had some heart, as can be seen at the end of the movie in a really nice scene that I won’t ruin for you.

Other highlights of the movie include Bill Hader’s character of Agent W who went around in disguise as Andy Warhol, which was hilarious.  Also, Will Arnett’s cameo as annoying Agent AA was a nice surprise.  Finally, the character of Griffin played by Michael Stuhlbarg who experiences all possible futures simultaneously which was pretty cool.

Now the movie, however, wasn’t perfect.  I didn’t find the villain of Boris the Animal to be all that interesting, simply an evil alien who wants revenge.  Also, it lacked a lot of the comedy elements that had made the series so successful in the first place, though it still had the occasional witty line.

Overall, I enjoyed it but by no means was it perfect.  I think it was the best of the series as the first two really didn’t do it for me.  The lack of genuine characters was something that really hurt the first two movies and was definitely addressed in the third installment that I really didn’t expect much from.

-Tom