Hallucination

Rating: Null/10 (9 January 2013)

There is a good enough story here, which is the first surprise.
I will just tease here the main narrative thread, never-mind for a moment that this is for a MIB movie. It is anchored in two spots, a surly old man has regrets over something that happened a long time ago and we are told, regret is the biggest 'force' in the universe, regret as memory as the ability to envision an internal space. Indeed, the switch to the alternate timeline happens in the middle of a phonecall to his partner, as he is (we presume) about to unburden himself.
What happens in that alternate reality? Time-travel, we literally go on to visit the old man in his youth. Inside that remembered past, there is an alien visitor who has the ability to similarly open portals of vision to alternate narrative threads. So this is pretty good, the rift between two friends as the rift in the cinematic time-space continuum.
So why isn't this much good in the end?
Sonnenfeld is simply filming without focus. The decision, e.g, to set the past story in the time of Vietnam and Barbarella is great, it could be taken in so many directions, but instead lazily milked for flat jokes.
Josh Brolin is great though, someone give the man his Lonesome Dove.