Men In Black 3 - A Film Review

It's been ten years since the last Men In Black film was released (which, for you heathen, was MIB 2), so many have been pleasantly surprised by its return. I was one such person. This, of course, led to my going to see it.

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When Borris the Animal escapes his prison on the moon, MIB have a problem. He's intent on killing Kay, the man who took his arm. But perhaps more unusually, he's going to do it before he was even caught with the aid of time travel.

Agent Jay must travel back in time to set history back on the right track and prevent an invasion before all is lost - or isn't, depending on your perspective.

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Men In Black 3 focuses around the singular most debated subject in the Sci-Fi universe: Time travel. I myself have written posts revolving around it, but apparently I'm either wrong or, more likely, Steven Spielberg and whoever wrote the script decided that that didn't appeal to them and would rob them of a plot.

The classic and cliched use for time travel is the 'let's assassinate a man before he does anything negative'. I'm not going to go into how this doesn't work, but I'll leave you the link to my posts on time travel. Still, onto the real review here.

The story itself isn't bad at all. Finally, one of the great questions of the MIB universe is answered: Who was Kay? A bit of a grump and a general killjoy, nobody ever really liked Kay for his sense of humour. In this installment, we find out exactly who he was, plus we get to know some more MIB history and some stuff to do with Jay. There are, however, several very prominent moments of cheese sitting around. I believe some people call them 'cheesy'. If you watch this, look out - the Edam is out to get you. Aside from the evident corniness, it's a good plot. It includes rockets. Who doesn't like rockets?

As far as characters are concerned, most of what's there was there before: Jay, Kay and an evil villain. The difference this time round is that the evil villain has a lovely little creature hiding in his hand. Oh, and there's two of him: Present and past. Unfortunately there's really not much effort put into developing this rampant animal, and it shows as a slight hollowness in his actions. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones do a good job of acting as Jay and Old Kay, but I have to say, I liked Young Kay the best. Played by Josh Brolin, he looked uncannily like Old Kay, so it was fairly believeable that it was indeed him.

So, what do I rate this Sci-Fi movie? How much out of ten? Well, I'd go for a solid seven (7/10). You've got some likeable characters - all pre-developed in the other films - followed by a relatively good plot with some alien madness thrown in every now and then. What isn't to like? There are simply one or two extra questions in need of answering, and perhaps several little things that could've been done better, the least of these being that NO-ONE SPEAKS ON THE MOON! This aside, a good, enjoyable film - see this if you've enjoyed the other installments or just general Will Smith awesomeness.