Lisa KennedyDenver Post
It's been a decade since Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones appeared on screen as comedic partners, but now alien-control Agent J and Agent K are back in "Men in Black 3."Fittingly, given the franchise's space-time theories of time and dimension, this outing hinges on time travel.
When the taciturn senior agent K (Jones) vanishes in a profoundly existential way, J goes back to 1969 to thwart the designs of Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement) and save his future partner -- and the planet. Josh Brolin's turn as a younger K is a clever, well-played pleasure (and deliciously peculiar since Brolin and Jones were in "No Country for Old Men").
It's been a few years, too, since Smith -- not so long ago a staple of summertime fare -- had a berth in the season of the presumptive tentpole blockbuster. He's been plying his trade in more serious fare as actor-producer ("The Pursuit of Happyness" and "Seven Pounds") as well as producer ("The Secret Life of Bees" and "Lakeview Terrace") with laudable if mixed results.
The Smith-Jones duo's return as the titularly clad operatives, while not exactly essential, comes with the charms of reprised, well-liked characters and a "didn't-see-that-coming" conclusion that makes up for the first hour's sequelitis.
It's easy to forget mid-kvetch that sequels are popular in large part because they reunite us with familiar characters we took to in the first place. Here the familiar is the story. "Men in Black 3" is about J and K: their odd-couple energy, their abiding fondness, J's interest in what makes K tick ever so imperceptibly.
With the exception of Emma Thompson's martini-dry timing, the beginning is pro forma. Maybe that's part of the point: J and K have nested into their banter, their mind-erasing of bystanders who have witnessed aliens, their routine.
A spat of sorts finds the pair on the phone, which makes it possible to crack the door open on their personalities. K wears a perpetual hangdog glower. J has a big portrait of a dog hanging on his wall. K's home is a surprisingly warmer affair, a masculine library. J's is a sleek, minimalist abode with an outsized screen just off camera for video games.
The goofy aliens and mandated (but hardly awesome) 3-D are for easy laughs, yuks and a couple of "awws" (a spiky little thing in a Chinatown restaurant is especially cute). A scene in a bowling alley finds a wise guy mouthing off and gesticulating part Jersey, part a galaxy far, far away.
Written by Etan Cohen ("Tropic Thunder") and starring an actor angling to portray the nation's first black prez, "Men in Black 3" teases ideas of race and racism. "1969 wasn't the best time for your people," says slacker/time-jumping facilitator Jeffrey Price (a pleasingly lax Michael Chernus), right before J leaps off the Chrysler Building into the vortex of the roiling decade. An earlier scene in a Chinese restaurant likewise swings on a performer being in on -- heck, exploiting -- the joke.
J's warned more than once: "Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answer to." Still, he's right to wonder, given what he's learned of the cosmos in his years of service. What questions has he to fear?
Contrary to the evidence, it's hard to believe the filmmakers -- or Clement -- intended to make villain Boris an example of the banality of evil. Though he's got a bizarrely mirthless laugh and his teeth are a jagged mess, he's dull.
In the spirit of happy déjà vu, there's Griffin, an alien that recalls a former Boulder resident alien: one Mork from Ork. Michael Stuhlbarg ("Boardwalk Empire" ''A Serious Man") has Robin Williams' squinty, impish smile. Once he arrives on screen, "Men in Black" finds itself in bemusing, touching and smarter territory.
Brolin is terrific capturing the tight-lipped cowboy poetry of Jones' Agent K as a quasi-cowpoke in a suit. But it's not mere imitation. After all, something did indeed happen to K to make him the grim mentor J knows him as. What that was turns out to be one of the finer kernels offered in an airy popcorn flick.
Two and a half out of four stars
ABOVE: In this film image released by Sony Pictures, Tommy Lee Jones, right, and Will Smith star are shown in a scene from "Men in Black 3." (AP Photo/Columbia Pictures-Sony, Wilson Webb)
