Men in Black 3 (2012) * * * 1/2

Directed by:  Barry Sonnenfeld

Starring:  Will Smith, Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jemaine Clement, Emma Thompson, Alice Eve

The first two Men in Black films were both slyly fun.   They satirized "aliens attack" films while being one also.   I am shocked to learn I hadn't reviewed either for this blog, but I'd give the first two entries three stars each.   The third installment now has time travel to poke fun at, and the result is both entertaining on a story level and touching in other ways.   

We recall Agent J (Smith) and Agent K (Jones), who as the third film opens are now longtime partners battling a particularly nasty alien named Boris the Animal (Clement).   Boris escaped from life imprisonment on the moon and traveled back in time to 1969 to kill Agent K, thus avoiding imprisonment and preventing K from installing a global force field which would prevent Boris' race from attacking Earth and cause the extinction of his kind.  

J wakes up one morning to find that K died in 1969 while battling Boris the Animal, so J learns the ways and means of time travel, which involves a handheld device and not being afraid to leap from the top of the Empire State Building.   The method doesn't much matter anyway, it's what happens when J reaches 1969 which gives Men in Black 3 its heart and inspired humor.   J hopes to find the younger K (Brolin), who is as laconic, humorless, and deadpan as his older self, and battle Boris the Animal together and prevent K's untimely death.  

The Apollo 11 shuttle launch plays a huge factor in the events, in which Neil Armstrong and company see J, K, and Boris battling all over the place, but don't say anything because doing so might delay their place in history.   There is also Griff (Stuhlbarg), an alien donning an Elmer Fudd hat who possesses something Boris needs to carry out his plan and who is able to see numerous variations of future events which can be altered by the slightest action or inaction by those involved.     His interpretation of why the 1969 Mets eventually won the World Series consists of varying degrees of luck, chance, and a not-so-well manufactured baseball.   

Brolin not only behaves like Tommy Lee Jones, but sounds like him too.   The story goes that during the filming of No Country for Old Men (2007), in which both Jones and Brolin starred, Brolin played a practical joke on the directors by calling them while pretending to be Jones.    The impression is uncanny.   There is also a scene involving Andy Warhol's Factory in which Warhol is not who he seems to be.   Funny stuff.   

The Men in Black films work because the actors remain unfazed by the insanity going on around them.    They treat the presence of Star Wars-esque creatures and evil alien plots as if they were routine, which adds to the laughs.    They don't do a single double-take in the entire series.    Men in Black 3 inventively handles a time travel plot and adds a dimension to the relationship between J and K which not only alters their friendship, but allows us to question whether K's recruitment of J in the first film was a chance meeting, or destined to happen.