Men in Black 3: Future Review

Surprisingly not full of suck

Men in Black 3: Future Review

Monkey Score: Four Opposable Thumbs Up (out of Five)

(From the Monkey Time Machine - 2011)

"Men in Black 3" is far better than "Men in Black 2" for one reason - it takes the characters into new territory, instead of the shoot-the-alien-before-it-destroys-earth plot we saw the first two times out.

Since you may not remember way back to 2002, the Men in Black are an alien-tracking organization so secret the government doesn't even know about it. But, inevitably, a 100-foot slug decides to ingest an office building and dozens of humans see this. The MIB use a special pen-sized device called a neuralizer to erase people's memories of the event. The neuralizers are the only things that keep people feeling safe about their lives, the MIB doctrine goes.

So, of course, in MIB3, the neuralizers stop working. It's in all the trailers, so I don't think I'm giving anything away.

Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith reprise their roles as Agents J and K, as they try to figure out what the problem is, and quarantine the growing number of witnesses. Agent J wisely decides to tell the witnesses everything and even give them a tour of the MIB facility, mostly because it calms them down. And since they plan to restart the neuralizers, why not?

Smith and Jones find themselves up against a devious alien shape-shifting trickster, Koli (anagram of "Loki", which I don't think is an accident). Koli is played with shocking ferocity by hot-with-a-side-of-crazy-eyes Amy Poehler, taking a leave of absence from Saturday Night Live. Apparently, she has a device that's causing the neuralizers to stop working. Even when she's eating an entire police squadron, she's so damn likable that it's hard not to root for the villain. But then she switches to crazy-batshit-mean in about half a second and it's clear she must die.

Meanwhile, the number of alien sightings go through the roof. President Gore appears to make a cameo, but the filmmakers are tight-lipped as to whether the appearance is real or computer-generated. However, Gore has previously shown himself comfortable in the presence of movie cameras ("An Inconvenient Truth", "Global Warming is Hot!" with co-star Paris Hilton).

An audience favorite is the gang of gross but cocky worm-bugs set loose on the streets of New York. Successfully seducing drug-addled club girls (especially those on the new "Foxy" drug) is so convincing that it might persuade a few hot young things to stay away from the harder stuff.

Like the other MIB films, the emphasis is on goofy fun. Coming off the unfortunate stinker "We, Robots" (I, Robot 2), Will Smith makes good in another futuristic action movie, but one that plays well to his humor. Word is he took a break from directing the 24th Bond movie to shoot this sequel.

Again,Tommy Lee Jones' businesslike sternness and logic plays well against Smith's more spontaneous, freewheeling style. And the surprisingly clever game of cat-and-mouse between Smith & Jones and Koli keeps the movie racing along, even as the general population begins to panic over the large number of aliens.

As soon as the MIB figure out how to get the neuralizers working, they stop again. How is Koli doing it? Are we sure it's still her? All signs point to her, and she doesn't discourage the attention.

I won't reveal the ending, except to say it's not the one you expect.