'Men In Black' strikes back with average entertainment

Watching "Men In Black 3" can best be described as the best case scenario of running into an old best friend from grade school at a high school reunion. You're surprised to see him again after years of being completely out of your mind and out of your life for one reason or another and are very happy to see that he's doing well for himself. By this point however, you realize that he's simply changed too much and things can just never be the same between you no matter how hard you may try. Even when you're having fun, you've essentially realized that you're time together is up and there's most likely nothing in existence to reignite that fuel.

Set 10 years after "Men In Black II," "Men In Black 3" continues the everyday work life of MIB agents J and K, reprised by Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones respectively. When J wakes up to discover himself in a world in which his partner of 15 years was murdered over 40 years ago however by one of his earlier enemies, Boris the Animal -Played by Jemaine Clement,- he tracks down and dons time travel equipment in to travel to the day of K's death, aiming to prevent a young K -Josh Brolin- from suffering his newly destined fate.

"Men In Black 3" can be summed up best in a single word and that word is safe. This film rarely ever dips below the territory of mediocre but almost never rises to being memorable. Whatever charisma Clement has when doing "Flight of the Conchords" was desperately needed here because his character is so generic and uninteresting that even the film forgets to give him screentime.

As per usual, Smith and Jones hold their own by virtue of phoning their performances in. In Smith's case this can be somewhat jarring considering the several serious roles that he has come off of in recent years, yet he plays this character as if he was still that new kid on the block from the 90s. Acting wise, the only one that walks away from this one with an impressive performance is the reason I would recommend anybody see this film at least once. Josh Brolin's performance as a younger agent K may oddly enough be one of the most remarkable things that I have seen this year. His look, speech, and mannerisms are so eerily yet organically close to Jones that I never even noticed that he was essentially gone from the film after about 20 minutes.

Beyond Brolin's spectacular performance, the film has several decent enough action set pieces sprinkled about but the film just lacks any real teeth. I had a better time in "Men In Black 3" than I could have ever anticipated and the film is undoubtedly and improvement over "Men In Black II" but everything about the movie is just so average that as I sit here writing this roughly a day after having seen the film, I'm already beginning to forget exactly what happened. It may be a fun two hours if you're hurting for things to do but I'd be lying if I said I wanted to see this franchise continue.

C+