Decent as a Popcorn Flick, But a Poor Entry for THIS Franchise

Rating: 7/10 (4 December 2012)

I was never too intrigued to see "Men in Black 3". After hearing about all the problems during the production of the film, I wasn't too hopeful about how the final product would come out. So I skipped watching it in the theatre, and had no real plans of seeing it in the foreseeable future. The only reason I did end up seeing it was because my mom spontaneously bought it. And should I have given this movie more credit? Yes. But maybe not as much as I've heard other people give it.
The whole plot of this movie is that an alien criminal named Boris escapes from prison and time travels back to 1969 to kill Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones), before the Young Version of K (Josh Brolin) can shoot off 1969 Boris' arm. So J (Will Smith) travels back as well to save Young K's life and stop Old K from disappearing from the timeline. There's a whole mess of a lot more but since it's time travel, it's hard to talk about it without spoiling a lot of stuff. I know from just that it sounds very cliché and boring, but trust me it's much more interesting than just that.
Now as far as acting goes, it's a sci-fi action/comedy, don't expect Oscar performances. Will Smith headlines, as always, and I don't think I can say a lot about him except its Will Smith being Will Smith. Now, Will Smith can deliver amazing performances like in "The Pursuit of Happiness", but when he's in a mainstream comedic action blockbuster, you know what you're going to get from him.
Now Josh Brolin plays the young Agent K. All I can say is that Josh Brolin as young Tommy Lee Jones is the equivalent of Joseph-Gordon Levitt as young Bruce Willis in "Looper". If imitation is a form of flattery, then Tommy Lee Jones is the most complimented guy in the world. Brolin not only nails Jones as K, but Jones overall, throughout his entire acting career. He reflects Jones back in like the 90's where he was taking serious, but not too serious roles where he could be occasionally really funny and Brolin revisits that. It's so cool that even though Tommy Lee Jones is in this one for a total of about 8 minutes, you feel like he's still there the whole time and you're not mad he got cut.
The special effects are a little bit more polished than the previous movies, but they still end up looking pretty bad and cheesy. Now some of it works because of the 1969 setting and I'm willing to just fool myself into thinking they're trying to pull the whole nostalgic throwback that "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" did with its alien and the 1950's setting. I know that's not at all what 'MiB 3' was going for, but I'll convince myself that they were so that I don't just write the effects off.
Now while it's not as apparent as I thought it would be, you can still see the slapdash way it was reported that the script was put together. Throughout this movie you watch all the characters go to a ton of places and through so many situations, it feels like they came up with a bunch of random scenes and just said "Ok, take these 12 and make a movie out of it". It doesn't feel like there's any reason for some of these except to remind you it takes place in 1969 and the pace of the story once they get to 1969 feels so weird, there just doesn't feel like there's much cohesiveness. It feels so cut and paste, it honestly detracted a lot of the fun from the movie. While some of these scenes are funny, their reasons for being in this film feel non-existent.
Now the tone of this film is so, (forgive the pun), alien to this franchise that it feels like a brand new movie. The first two films have a steady tone, but this one feels like it's trying too hard to fit into a new generation, it's almost like the film has forgotten its fan base. I didn't feel like I was watching a new "Men in Black" movie, I felt like I was watching some awkward reboot with the same actors being used just to bring the fans of the original to see this new one while the filmmakers seemed to want the fans to forget the old movies. This movie's target audience is not the fans of the original movies, it's just the mass general public, and that really bugs me with franchises that have had a certain fanbase in the past.
Overall, "Men in Black 3" is very enjoyable with an imitation performance that matches Joseph-Gordon Levitt's in "Looper", some fun moments and classic time travel mind games, but it's definitely not the strongest in the franchise. It's sadly obvious that the script was slapped together, the tone is completely off from the old movies, and it abandons its fans and tries way too hard to appeal to the general public. I'd say it's worth a rental and if you do like it, don't buy it for more than $10 on DVD. Paying the extra few dollars for the Blu-Ray is not worth it. Trust me; you will not be missing out.