Cast: I like Will Smith and have always enjoyed the Will Smith summer movie model. It's been a while since the last entry and when that last entry is Hancock, that certainly opens the door to question my initial statement. MiiiB is more of a return to form for him, but it's definitely fighting progression. He's 10 years older than he was in the last movie but the movie still treats him like he's a Jr. Agent. Tommy Lee Jones is good, if not disinterested. Josh Brolin plays K very well, but it's a shame that they have him playing a 29-year old instead of someone more his age. James Clement did a really good job as the main villain allowed me to play a game of "that's him?" when I got home and looked up the cast. Emma Thompson and Alice Eve are both good in small, largely peripheral roles.
Plot: I heard something about this movie starting production before the script was done. The last blockbuster I remember doing that was Transformers 2. That about says it all. You see, the original MiB was pretty meticulous. The jokes crisp. The characters well defined and well serviced. The references to real world events researched. This one looks to have started with the thought "Moon landing" and tried too hard to make everything else work. If they were so set to have James Brolin on board, couldn't they have just had him be K's secret son and had a Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade with a black guy thing going on? As a rule of thumb, if it's going to take 10 years to make a sequel, the script should reflect 10 years of thought. Otherwise, it just won't work.
Elephant in the Room: Time travel is almost always a mistake. Back to the Future is the exception not the rule. Also, BttF was conceived as a time travel movie. MiiiB uses it as a late-run plot device. The result is pretty disastrous from a continuity perspective* K is married with a wife in the original, but this movie introduces Agent O as a potential love interest. Alice Eve and Josh Brolin are too old (Brolin way more than Eve) to play the younger versions of their characters. There is almost no Butterfly Effect either. The whole thing is so sloppy.
*Yes, even summer blockbusters should worry about continuity.
To Sum Things Up:
Best movie I've seen since The Avengers. I'm still waiting to find the movie that makes me happy I didn't instead see The Avengers a second time. If you like MiB, it is worse than the first and better than the second, but much closer to the latter than the former. Even from an action movie perspective, there's really not much to be gained from seeing this in theaters.
Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend
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