Will Smith. One of the most charismatic men in Hollywood. An actor who can do it all. Be the funny guy in Bad Boys, the romantic lead in Hitch, the action hero in Independence Day, the cerebral sci-fi star in I Am Legend, the emotional actor in The Pursuit of Happyness, However. He also turned down the lead in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained to make Men In Black 3. So apparently he just can’t act like he has standards.
Reprising his role as an alien-chasing operative, Smith’s Agent J uncovers an assassination plot, and must time-travel to 1969 to stop an alien criminal named Boris (a wasted Jemaine Clement) from assassinating a young Agent K (a pitch-and-accent-perfect Josh Brolin) and changing history.
Unfortunately this threequel quickly becomes an exercise in rehashing cinematic history – except without the charm, laughs or enthusiasm of the original MIB film.
And the old cast are clearly feeling this. Luckily for Tommy Lee Jones, aka The Saddest Face in History, his relentless impression of a depressed basset hound suits his increasingly jaded agent. As the film’s centre and comic relief, Smith’s phoned-in Stereotypical Sassy Black Guy performance is disappointing, with his head-bobbing punchlines feeling as tired as gags about Mick Jagger being an alien intent on impregnating all human females.
Stylistically, Barry Sonnenfeld’s direction also proves lazy, as absurd cuts (such as the agents crossing baseball stadiums in nanoseconds, and dead bodies magically disappearing) and a tepid tone betray a man with decidedly mediocre story-telling skills, both visually and emotionally.
Despite a few nice gags (Bill Hader’s Andy Warhol is inspired), MIB 3 feels dated and pointless. When the only novelty of an installment is that it’s in not-at-all-novel 3D, it’s time to leave this dead-in-the-water franchise in the past.