Best since Butch and Sundance.

Rating: Null/10 (23 May 2012)

Agent J: Who are we? Agent K: We are no-one. Our mission is to monitor extraterrestrial activity on Earth.
Summer Sci-Fi just got a whole lot more amusing with Men in Black III, an entertaining action comedy with the best duo since Butch and Sundance. Will Smith as Agent J is light-hearted and lithe while Tommy Lee Jones's Agent K is stone-faced and stolid. Together they are fun at their repartee and sweet in their affection. The two have chemistry.
J must travel back to 1969 to save K from being murdered in the present. While time travel has been overworked in film, this case is at least carefully drawn: The late '60's are meticulously re-created, the action is credible, and Josh Brolin as the young K is spot-on with his imitation of Tommy Lee Jones. The chemistry between the early K and J is every bit as enjoyable as that of the older K.
The now required female agents' boss, Agent O (Emma Thompson), fares well as a sympathetic head of MIB, and her 1969 self (Alice Eve) is an accurate depiction of a young O. Times sure have changed now that females rule the roost (see James Bond, for example).
Bill Heder's intriguing cameo of Andy Warhol captures the ironic cool of the '60's, bashing the proletarian pop culture while at the same time adoring it. Baddie Boris the Animal (Jermaine Clement) can be as mean as any villain in The James Bond canon.
The sets are just as cool as they were in the first two MIB but less impressive given how used we are to CGI. The guns, well, they do grab attention.
Yet it is the attempt at character development that most impresses me, the need to go deeper, even back in time, to develop character. I never thought I'd be praising that effort in a summer blockbuster.