ViewGuide

Created Jun 06, 2012 07:21PM PST • Edited Mar 20, 2016 02:17AM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Great 4.0

   The best MIB? Indeed. MIB3 is clever and fun, as expected, with a surprising inventiveness that MIB1 approached and MIB2 didn’t.

   Now … it’s not especially LOL, chuckles and appreciative guffaws notwithstanding.

   Charisma it’s got in abundance, courtesy of major moviestar turns by Will Smith and the two Agent Ks – Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin. Speaking of doubles, a great action movie needs a worthy villain, which Jermain Clement’s Boris the Animal assuredly is, twice. The love interest is doubled also – Emma Thompson and Alice Eve, Miss Brilliant and Miss Aphrodite.

4. Acting

   Really Great 4.5

   Moviestars at work. Good to see.

   Will Smith is pure charisma, a good thing since some of his lines aren’t great, some gags fall a bit flat and he’s on-screen the whole movie. He’s clearly having fun in a silly movie and we’re more than happy to spend time with him. Witness how he makes sport of stereotypical racism from the 60s. Not many actors can pull that off and keep the audience with them. The Fresh Prince does.

   Tommy Lee Jones mails it in, but his part is rescued by Josh Brolin as his younger self. Brolin’s a revelation, tough yet charming and more than a little touching in the end. As I noted in reviewing him in Milk, Brolin’s late career stardom is both welcome and remarkable.

   Speaking of two actors playing the same character at different ages, Emma Thompson and Alice Eve play the love interest. Thompson’s superior acting skills are put to good use in a spectacularly weird speech, while Eve’s superior hottiness make her an understandable object of desire. Future Bond girl? Surely.

   Jemaine Clement makes a first-rate villain, sort of an intergalactic Hells Angel. Nicole Scherzinger is more than hot enough to be his moll. “Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me.” Is that a question?

   Michael Stuhlbarg is damn near unrecognizable as a gentle alien. Hard to believe this is the same actor from A Serious Man.

   Finally Mike Colter is nicely stalwart as a heroic Colonel, while Bill Hader delivers perfectly as Andy Warhol. Hader deserves his 15 minutes of fame in comedy after comedy these days.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Great 4.0

8. Male Costars Great 4.0

10. Film

    Great 4.0

    Barry Sonnenfeld’s still got it. With merry men Etan Cohen & Lowell Cunningham, he finds his inner adolescent, processes it through a hundred million dollars worth of FX and puts it on the silver screen. But for some flat jokes, it would be perfect.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

12. Play Very Good 3.5

    The crazy-ass plot really works, convincingly taking time travel seriously enough to stitch it all back together again, while servicing the plot all the way through.

    + The catch-in-your-throat ending.
    - Most of the jokes fall flat.

13. Music Great 4.0

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.5

    Savage violence, titillating sex and merely salty language is a recipe for PG-13 savagery. Say what? The Edginess scores are highest for violence at 3.7, less for sex at 2.0 and least for rudeness at 1.8.

    Parents beware the first of those: 3.7 for violence, aka Savagery.

17. Sex Titillating 2.0

18. Violence Savage 3.7

19. Rudeness Salty 1.8

21. Reality

    Supernatural 3.7

    Pleasantly supernatural, other than Boris the Animal’s violence. That is supernatural, yes; pleasant, no.

22. Circumstantial Surreal 3.0

23. Biological Supernatural 4.0

24. Physical Supernatural 4.0