It's quite evident when
movies are made simply to make money. Okay, most movies are made to make money,
but sometimes it seems that a film is almost forced upon the audience. Men in
Black 3 is one of those films.
The films brings together, once again, Will Smith's Agent J and Tommy Lee Jones' Agent K, and adds on the element of time travel to their book of adventures. As Will Smith travels back in time to save Tommy Lee Jones' character from getting killed in the present, thankfully the makers went ahead with casting Josh Brolin as a younger Agent K rather than using CGI. Besides the time travel element, the story takes on a more emotion and serious path, which is also the most obvious direction it could have taken, almost completing the "cycle of life" linking it back to the original Men in Black. It's a much stronger story, but one that proves to be disappointing due to the lack of originality in the execution of the film.
10 years too late, the
film brings about absolutely nothing new to the previous two films. The humor
is exactly the same that the audience has been seeing till now. The
"normal personal" turning out to be an alien has been done to death
in the films. Even worse, celebrities’ turning out to be aliens is a joke that
no longer amuses or fascinates. There are no real additions to the gadgets or
supporting characters. What is really unfortunate is that even thought the film
travels back in time to the 1960s, it fails to make the most of the time
period. It remains so caught up in the story and focused on the two main leads
that nothing around them really matters. Although on the positive side, Josh
Brolin shines as the younger Agent K and it seems that Will Smith miraculously
hasn’t aged a tiny bit over the years.
All in all the film lacks the WOW factor that the first two films had. Now, it might prove to be interesting for the newer generation who were too small to remember the first two films, but then the story is such that it only makes sense if you have seen at least the first film, which came out in 1997.
I do hope that this is
the last of the series. Unless, Will Smith is secretly preparing his children
to take over the franchise and we will be seeing a reboot of the film in the
future. Actually, in that case, I really hope this is the last we have heard of
the Men in Black.
I was also a bit irritated since I had no choice but to view the film in 3D since the local cinema was not playing the 2D version (actually they were in the dubbed Hindi version), but once again 3D is nothing to talk about and is your average run-of-the-mill 3D that is becoming ever so common in mediocre films.
Rating 2/5 Stars
