Men in Black III

Men in Black … Three. I watched this last night in the throes of an epic hangover – seeking something that would make it all feel alright, to enjoy along with as much greasy food and sugary drinks as possible. In that respect the film performs admirably. Big Willy reprises his role as whatever letter he has been assigned, as does Tommy Lee Jones, a different letter. Who knows what the MIB agency does when they run out of letters, or want to hire two agents whose names are the same letter. Anyway Jones who is slightly supplanted for most of the movie by Josh Brolin. The first act sees you on familiar ground, Big Willy and Jones doing some alien related stuff whilst Jones remains stoney faced, and Willy is aghast at how emotionally stunted he is. The thing here is that its made quite clear that the ten years between the last film and this one are supposed to have taken place in the film world as well, quite how these two have been partners for that long, and are still having this same conversation is almost as hard to believe as all the extra terrestrial mumbo jumbo. A note on that, I have written before about how Willy has access to the fountain of eternal youth, this film is a prime example, whilst Jones is barely up to actually playing himself in this film, Willy looks like he stepped right out of 2002. Weird right. The second and third acts get tied up in a time travel conundrum that means all sorts of good fun at the expense of how silly the end of the sixties were. I personally much prefer the exploding gross alien stuff to the crappy hippy jokes, though the for some reason the depiction of Warhol was quite entrancing. Yeah, Warhol is in this film, you can really tell there were script issues at points. Anyway, the climax of the film is brilliant until a frankly weird, dumb and clearly tacked on ending ruins it all by attempting to … well I am not sure what, appeal to people who give a crap about emotional stuff instead of big gross aliens I guess. Who knows. Its a bummer though, it was all going so well then this part just makes me want to throw my shoe through the tv. If you watch it keep this in mind: “Where the crap did he come from”. “Seriously…why. Why is he there”. It will make sense when you see it. Then you will throw your shoe too. Aside from the broken tv, this movie takes me right back to watching the first two, it feels the same, largely because it basically is, and thats what I want when I am so hung over I can hardly move.