In the present day an alien named "Boris the Animal" escapes from a poor excuse for a maximum security prison on the moon and travels (how?) to earth to seek revenge on The Men In Black's agent K (Tommy Lee Jones), the man that imprisoned him 40 years earlier. Meanwhile agent K and agent J are going about their business keeping the streets of New York clear of extraterrestrials. Boris appears on the scene and, after a feeble attempt to kill K, seeks out a guitar geek who happens to be in possession of a time travel device. His plan? To travel back to 1969 and kill agent K thereby preventing his incarceration and simultaneously preventing K from deploying some kind of planetary defense shield. The absence of this planetary shield will clear the way for a present day invasion of earth by Boris's brethren. In order to keep all this from happening agent J must also travel back to 1969 where he'll team up with a younger agent K and premium antics will ensue. That's the theory.
In reality the entire film feels like a joke I've heard before. The film makers seem to be somewhat aware of this possible effect and attempt to play up the story around the characters to compensate. That effort would have worked better if they, well, put more effort into it. Instead they took the discount approach to traveling back to 1969 (no doubt to save money for all the uber-expensive CG shots) and reduced that complex and compelling time in American history to a few stereotypical hairdos, catchphrases and musical snippets. They even figured out a way to stuff all the cliche's onto one set (thereby saving millions in expensive street reassignment surgery) by directing agents K and J to a party at Andy Warhol's "factory".
Throughout the entire flash-back part of the film I was dogged by a nagging feeling that nothing was actually happening on the screen. There was movement, sound and splashy (if decidedly retro looking) CG. There was talking, more movement and more sound but virtually nothing of narrative, visual or comic interest. I began to suspect that I was in the theater because I'd been neuralized and told to attend.
And speaking of Tommy Lee Jones his disappearance after half an hour leads me to wonder if the time travel aspect of the story was something that came about organically or was the result of Jones wanting only limited exposure in this product and the screen writers needing to contrive some device where his absence could be logically excused. Not knowing the development tale of this product I couldn't say for sure but I know this: when I go to an MIB movie I expect to see Tommy Lee Jones. While I understood going in that Josh Brolin would be playing a younger TLJ in some time travel scenes, I didn't realize that Jones would depart before I finished my popcorn and never return. Not that I have anything against Josh Brolin, he's a fine actor who does his best here but he's not Tommy Lee Jones and a Men In Black movie largely without Mr Jones is like a Batman movie without Wayne Manor.
In a nutshell though Brolin lacks Jones' grim authority he doesn't really need it seeing that the whole time travel thing allows him to play a younger, decidedly lighter-of-spirit K than the grizzled xenomorph-whacker of later days. Indeed the break between the two ages of K becomes the narrative center of the film with Will Smith repeatedly asking "Man, what happened to you?" just to make sure it's always up front in our minds. Yet when that "something" finally occurs I was left asking my date "That's it? That's what changes him into the ultimate curmudgeon?" Given how much they'd built the moment up (and given how little else there was to grab hold of in this film) I was expecting/hoping for something that would knock my socks off. What I got was an enormous letdown wrapped in cheesy Hallmark sentiment that left me exiting the theater wishing I could travel back in time and get my 2 hours back.
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