Men in Black III (DVD REVIEW)
Men in Black III
DVD
Review by Kam Williams
Agents J
and K Reunite for Time-Travel, Franchise Finale
One sign that scriptwriters have run
out of fresh ideas is when they lazily recycle the shopworn, time-travel theme
in order to extend an expiring film series. This ill-advised approach has been
employed over the years in service of such sorry sequels as The Three Stooges
Meet Hercules (1962), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Star Trek IV:
The Voyage Home (1986) and Beastmaster 2: Through the Portal of Time (1991), to
name a few.
Even Back to the Future III (1990)
doubled-down on the dubious cinematic device when it had Michael J. Fox
teleported back to the Wild, Wild West instead of to the Fifties like the
earlier installments. Industry insiders use the Happy Days-inspired catchphrase
“Jumping the Shark” to mark the moment a farfetched episode plunges a franchise
headlong into an irreversible tailspin.
Fortunately, the
relatively-captivating Men in Black III is more
than just another, idea-bereft take-the-money-and-run
rip-off. Directed by Barry Sonnenfeld
(MIB & MIB II), the picture reunites Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones as
alien-hunting Agents J and K, respectively.
However,
don’t expect to see much of Tommy Lee this go-round, since he only makes what
really amounts to a couple of cameo appearances during the flick’s wraparound
opening and closing sequences. Otherwise, Josh Brolin plays K for the balance
of the story which unfolds in the summer of 1969.
At
the picture’s point of departure, we find a one-armed convict called Boris the
Animal (Jemaine Clement) sitting behind bars inside Lunar Max, a maximum
security prison located on the Moon. The evil alien soon escapes with the help
of his cake-bearing girlfriend (Nicole Scherzinger), his first visitor in over
40 years.
Next,
Agent J catches wind of the missing fugitive’s plans to venture backwards in
time to exact a measure of revenge on Agent K for having shot off his limb. The
vindictive Boris also intends to spearhead an intergalactic invasion of Earth
by the Boglodites, a bloodthirsty race of his rogue relatives. Naturally, J
decides to return to the past, too, to keep the world safe for humanity and to
make sure his partner survives any attempted rewrite of history.
Courtesy
of some preposterous, pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo, J learns how to time travel
and that he must accomplish all of the above and return to the present in less
than 24 hours, before a breach in the temporal fracture closes. (What?) Anyhow,
upon arriving on July 16, 1969, Agent J introduces himself to the 29 year-old
incarnation of already-humorless Agent K, and does his darnedest to loosen up
that trademark, Type-A personality.
What
ensues is an engaging enough mix of special effects-driven mirth and mayhem,
with the tension being wound around the imperiled launch of Apollo 11 at Cape Canaveral. But since there’s never a doubt that
Boris and the Boglodites are destined to be subdued, the true payoff arrives
after the action subsides by way of an emotional revelation that it would be
unfair to spoil.
A
fitting, franchise finale featuring all the fixins for a satisfying
sendoff!
Very Good
(3 stars)
Rated PG-13 for violence and suggestive content.
Running time: 106
minutes
Distributor: Sony Pictures
Home Entertainment
DVD Extras: The
Making of Men in Black III; “Back in Time” music video by Pitbull; and a gag
reel.
To see a trailer for
Men in Black III, visit:
No comments:
Post a Comment