Will Smith – Mosher'sUnimaginativelyEntitledBlog

Sequels and remakes seem to be all the rage right now. Will Smith’s obviously in need of a new swimming pool given this sequel to a 14 year-old original and a third Bad BoysÂ instalment also on the horizon.

Men In Black III

“Is there anybody here who is not an alien?”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Bad alien guy escapes and starts changing the timeline. Enter “J” and a ton of gadgets and effects

See it if you like: the original, and silly time travel films which raise more questions than they answer

Ah – sequels, adaptations, remakes and reboots. The seeming life blood of Hollywood these days. MiB3 is yet another in this string, and a good ten years since the disappointing sequel to the original. The good news, though, is that 3 does what 2 didn’t – adds in a new twist.

The original sequel (is that a weird phrase?) was very much the first film all over again, but with bigger aliens. What we have here, though, are new ideas and a very entertaining back-story which actually develops the characters. The humour, however, is lacking at the start and some of the laughs are very forced. Partly this is due to predictability, and partly as some of the lines just aren’t funny.

After the half-way mark, roughly, things pick up. The pace increases, the laughs come more readily and the action is actually quite tense. The effects are, as ever, superb. Tons of different aliens, but some excellent set pieces as well.

Don’t bother paying extra for 3D though. I say this all the time as it’s an expensive, pointless novelty. I’d reckon there’s maybe a minute of footage in the entire movie with enough “depth” to make 3D worthwhile. I guess it’s up to you if you think this is worth paying more for.

I’ll try not to give away any more than is in the trailer (some of the scenes from which, incidentally, aren’t in the final cut). A nasty bad guy alien called Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) escapes from a prison on the Moon. He sets out to get revenge on Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) by wiping him from history. Only Agent J (Smith) remembers history as it was before the change was made and seeks out a time travel device to go back and fix things.

Josh Brolin is excellent as the younger, slightly less miserable Agent K. Just by the voice alone, you could be forgiven for thinking you were watching a younger Jones. What made K interesting in the first two films was how morose he was. The main focus of this third instalment is why. And the answer is a superb one which really helps wrap the trilogy up.

Any complaints I have are minor and two of them involve a lot of spoilers. The other is the gross under-use of K’s relationship with “O” (Emma Thompson in the modern day, Alice Eve in the past). Things are hinted at, and it’s obvious there’s something there… but so little that it makes virtually no difference to the plot. In other words, it may as well not have been brought up in the first place. It’s hard to tell if it’s just a red herring or a side-story that was left to wither. A shame either way.

The important thing is that both Gillian and I enjoyed it. Not just a third outing for the same story, but a good tale in its own right.