Redbox Review: Men in Black 3

Usually, the rule of threes in movies means that no third movie is good, ever. If anyone questions that, let me jog your memory: Spy Kids 3, Back to the Future Part III, Shrek the Third… I could continue, but I think you get the point.

However, Men In Black 3 makes its way into a very elite group of the third movie of trilogies that are actually – wait for it - good. I approach third movies with a natural skepticism, so I watched MIB3 with a predetermined bend toward hatred. However, it didn’t take long before I was sucked into the plot, which the beloved but stoic Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) has disappeared entirely both from everyone’s lives and memories.

When Agent J (Will Smith) wakes up to find that his partner was killed in 1969, he realizes that the alien villain, Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement), has escaped prison, traveled back in time and killed Agent K, thus making him non-existent in the present world.

Agent J takes a leap of faith… off a building, and travels to the past to protect Agent K and help him defeat Boris before it’s too late. In the meantime, Agent J encounters a much younger Agent K who has a love interest, laughs a lot, and stops for pie when life gets too complicated.

After time spent tracking Boris down and planning to kill him, Agent K and Agent J are assisted by Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg), an alien who has the ability to see future events and whose planet has been destroyed. During the final battle with Boris, Agent K is saved by the brave act of a surprise character that helps to expose all of the previously hidden ties between K and J.

J returns to the time he came from and K reappears without knowing that anything is any different than it was before.

As a fan of the other two MIB films, I thought this movie was fantastic. The technology was there, the actors were great, and the plot was amusing in a purposefully cheesy way.

My only real complaints were sometimes it got a little too cheesy, even for Men in Black and the fighting scenes tended to be a bit drawn out.

MIB3 is a great way to end the series and does so nicely with the extra plot-twist at the end that pulls everything together. Overall, I would rate this movie with 4.5 stars, or six alien thumbs-up.

The movie has a runtime of 1 hour 46 minutes and is available from Redbox in either DVD or Blu-ray.