I’ve enjoyed the two comedic Men in Black adventures, but I don’t love them.  I think that the intrinsic “bigger picture” dramatic value of having a semi-secret government agency protecting Earth from crazy aliens is sacrificed in each movie by focusing on the antics of Will Smith.  Sure, he’s an entertaining guy, but these movies should be more than a collection of Smith’s one-liners, funny reactions and revulsion to being covered by alien slime.  It helps that Tommy Lee Jones is around as the straight man — ramrod straight, with a deadpan facade perfect for the role — yet the movies (especially 2) have never hit the heights they have attempted.

Men in Black 3 is, in my eyes, about on a par with the first one.  It is imaginative and funny and well worth watching, but it still isn’t the ultra cool sci-fi adventure that it could have been.  I actually missed Rip Torn!  One element that really works is Josh Brolin’s dead-on take of the younger version of Tommy Lee Jones.  It may be as much mimicry as performance, but Brolin is uncanny as the 39-year old version of Mr. Jones.

The time travel scenario is handled interestingly, although I will never believe that it would be possible for someone to meet him- or herself, or even exist in more than one form, at the same moment.  That just doesn’t make sense to me.  Still, I was able to appreciate how Mr. Smith manipulated himself through time to save his partner.  And the climax contains a dramatic revelation that caught me off-guard, and which was quite effective.  There are definite merits to this story.

Barry Sonnenfeld’s direction is on a par with the first entry, and I would rate this film as just behind the first in terms of its quality and impact.  I didn’t care for the face of Boris the Animal (what’s with the stupid dark glasses?), but the opening sequence in the lunar prison was pretty cool.  There are plenty of neat little distractions along the way — Nicole Scherzinger’s thigh-high boots that zipper down all the way to the ground, the earnest pug portrait over Mr. Smith’s bed, the trivia about the 1969 Mets, how the Apollo 11 references are handled, etc. — if one tires of the story, but the film moves along quite briskly.  All in all I had a fun time, and I think it will hold up well during repeat viewings.  ☆ ☆ ☆.  1 June 2012.