"Okay, see, the prerequisite for a joke is that it be funny." "It's never been funny."

Rating: 6/10 (15 June 2012)

15 years earlier the original comic book adaptation of Men In Black had been a reasonably fluffy, lightweight distraction that comfortably passed an hour and forty minutes. The much-lambasted sequel continued in the same vein, and it's perhaps difficult to see why it's regarded as being so inferior to the original, given that both are just formulaic popcorn munchers.
This third movie in the resurrected franchise commendably tries something new, though does look tired. It doesn't help that Smith's schtick is now so predictable and by-the-numbers, and his assault of an interviewee at one press junket for kissing him does rather pull down the curtain on Will's media friendly facade. The fact that Smith could go from losing his temper to PR Will in just a couple of seconds does display how much artifice goes into the whole package, and how contrived the act really is. It doesn't help that Tommy Lee Jones spends the movie looking like he'd rather be somewhere else, making it a somewhat laboured opening.
Thankfully the time travel excursion to the 1960s and Josh Brolin's involvement perk things up considerably. There's still the lazy laughs and the dodgy racial profiling of Asian minorities (who, unlike Smith, aren't granted effacing empowerment), though the language and suggestive content is less family-friendly than a decade previously. But what's missing more than anything is an inane-but-catchy rap from Smith to bookend the entire thing. I guess this is one time that Smith DID leave us hangin' without bringin' us the fun again.
Yet what turns this entire thing around and makes it arguably the best in the series is a genuinely startling twist in the final ten minutes, one which, although signposted, the viewer didn't see coming because it's unexpected in a movie of this nature. Suddenly the no-brain piece of fluff retroactively fits itself and its former instalments with a sense of previously unexplored depth and motivation. It's so out of left-field for such a throwaway box office endeavour that it's genuinely surprising and makes you re-evaluate what you've just been watching. There may be life in this series yet, even if there isn't in Lee Jones' performance.