User blog:LexiLexi/Men In Black III: Review Roundup



Men in Black III opened not too long ago, and the Internet is abuzz with opinions. Did you see the third film of the series, and what did you think? After all, this was the first Men in Black film without Tommy Lee Jones as a central actor. Did Josh Brolin measure up? Could anyone measure up? See for yourselves...

CNN.com
Score: A- "Sonnenfeld and Cohen move their baby along with an integrity and gait that ought to serve as a blueprint for other filmmakers faced with the particular challenges of reviving big-ticket and time-dated hunks of pop culture. Amid the mayhem, the movie is sophisticated enough to note the family resemblance between Rick Baker-stitched aliens and the human creatures who populated Andy Warhol's Factory in the downtown Manhattan of 1969."

Rotten Tomatoes
Score:67%


 * "If you're looking for cinema verite, look elsewhere. If you're looking for a fun, fizzy sequel in a franchise left for dead 10 years ago, have at it."- Amy Biancolli


 * "An eclectic cast and stellar visual effects coalesce to make Men in Black 3 a quintessential kernel of summer popcorn cinema."- Tyler Handley


 * "It's all acceptably diverting, not actively unpleasant like the 2002 sequel. There are no grand twists or revelations comparable to the truth about the "galaxy" in the original."- Steven D. Greydanus


 * "The world hasn't been craving another Men In Black sequel as much as Will Smith's agent."- Willie Waffle

Huffington Post
Score:B "When this franchise launched a decade-and-a-half ago, the mixture of gross-outs and gags was doled out in exactly the right proportion, and I remember being jazzed at the possibility of new entries in the series arriving periodically. However, the singularly unremarkable follow-up five years later robbed me of just about all desire to ever revisit this world. Remarkably, this new entry manages to neutralize the memory of the singularly unremarkable second film, and makes me feel good about seeing these characters for yet another go-round (which, at the current exponential rate of development, should hit theaters sometime in summer of 2032)."

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times
Score: 3/5 "Let me say that although I liked the first 'MiB' movie, I wasn't particularly looking forward to this belated sequel. But I had fun. It has an ingenious plot, bizarre monsters, audacious cliff-hanging, and you know what? A closing scene that adds a new and sort of touching dimension to the characters of J and K."

The Boston Globe
Score: 2.5/5 "Brolin's [performance] is a feat of egolessness in which one actor completely subsumes himself into the style and sound of another. The performance works as an optical illusion: Our eye sees Brolin, but our brain is fooled into seeing Agent K and, through him, the craggy, beloved Jones made youthful again. 'Men in Black 3' is essentially a bait-and-switch — a movie that promises one star and delivers another — but because the imposture is so well-crafted, so serenely inventive, we accept the bargain. As far as the studio sees it, everybody wins: Tommy Lee Jones gets a paycheck and a vacation, while the young audiences of America are spared the horror of spending 106 minutes with an old person."

Screenrant.com
Score: 3.5/5 "Despite nearly a decade to get the narrative arc right, the Men in Black 3 story is a miss-mash of hits and misses. The movie’s explanation of time travel (as well as reality itself) is, for the most part, successfully presented by second act addition of Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg), an alien who is capable of viewing multiple iterations of reality. It’s not the most intelligent or scientific time travel film (see: Primer), but any underwhelming explanations are overshadowed by the on-screen hijinks."

The Star Tribune
Score: 1.5/4 "As good as Brolin is, though, the novelty wears off quickly, and we're once again left with the realization that there's no substance to the script (credited, for the record, to Etan Cohen). And all the familiar and rather flat comic elements lead up to a revelatory climax that comes out of nowhere and in no way earns the sort of heartrending emotion it aims to evoke from its audience. But the most disappointing part of all: Frank the talking pug is nowhere to be found. The movie is a dog anyway without him."