Men in Black III

     In 1997 a little movie came out about the infamous men who protect our planet from extraterrestrials. Little was known about them except that they wore, which was a black suit and sunglasses. “Men in Black” was a blockbuster in every word, going on to make over $ 580 million worldwide on a $ 90 million budget. It spawned a sequel in 2002 that many of us would have liked someone to have zapped us with one of those flashy things and let us just forget it. Now they are back again twelve years later ready to protect our planet again.

    Everything seems right in Agent K’s (Tommy Lee Jones) and Agent J’s (Will Smith) world. They are policing the world to make sure the aliens living among us are blending in.  Unbeknownst to them, Boris the Animal ( Jemaine Clement) has escaped the lunar prison he was in and is looking for pay back on Agent K. Boris has devised a plan to go back in time and kill Agent K before his arm is shot off and he is imprisoned. Boris goes back to 1969 and changes the timeline, a timeline that Agent K has been dead for forty years and he and Agent J were never partners. By Agent K being dead, he wasn’t able to install a system that would protect the world from an alien invasion. The only thing that can fix it is that Agent J has to go back to 1969 to kill the Boris that went back to Kill Agent K, in order to put the timeline back to normal. Agent K tracks down Boris, but is instead captured by a younger Agent K (Josh Brolin) who at first doesn’t believe Agent K’s stories. In the end Agent K believes Agent J and together they try to stop Boris and return the timeline back to normal.

      “Men in Black” was probably not one of those movies you kept asking yourself, “I wonder when they are going to make another one?” especially after the second one. The good news is we can just pretend the “Men in Black II” never happened and make this a sequel to the original. The movie starts off ok, with bad dialogue written by way too many writers to put on here, but the good news is the film gets better. Once Agent J goes back in time, the film becomes really fun, especially watching Josh Brolin do a perfect Tommy Lee Jones impression. Some of our favorite aliens are back as well, luckily some are not, and we get to meet some new ones that really make the film enjoyable.  They even dusted off Berry Sonnenfeld, who has been directing TV movies and put him back in charge. With a reported budget of over $ 250 million there is a lot riding on this film to get back to the black. The good thing is “Men in Black III” is an entertaining film to watch, one that will have you laughing and remembering why you enjoyed the original so much.

Brian Taylor