Movie review: Men In Black 3 ***

Stars: Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, Josh Brolin, Emma Thompson
Director: Barry Sonnenfeld
Rated: PG-13
Showing: Neptune Cinema week of Friday, June 15. For more information call 292-7296.
Tickets: Buy tickets online
Runtime: 105 minutes
Action/comedy

Josh Brolin impersonating the young Tommy Lee Jones is worth the price of admission to Men in Black 3. Dry, drawling, deadpan - he nails the flinty Texan in this sentimental sequel to the sci-fi comedies about secret agents in black suits who save the world from aliens.

We have to meet the young Agent K because an alien serial killer (Jemaine Clement) who isn't fond of his nickname, "Boris the Animal", has traveled back in time to save the arm that Agent K shot off in 1969, and avoid the 40-year prison sentence that followed.

And that bit of time travel means that Agent J (Will Smith) must go back and save his future partner, played by Jones through three films as a laconic loner who has saved the world a few times and doesn't brag about it.

Ten years have passed and everybody involved is much older now. The head of the agency (Rip Torn) is buried in an early scene. Emma Thompson, in the silliest scene of her big-screen career, takes over.

Boris escapes from the super-secret lunar prison and the Agent K of the past and Earth of the present are in peril. That leaves an awful lot of this movie in the usually capable hands of Will Smith.

But if director Barry Sonnenfeld, who hasn't been funny in this century, has lost his fastball, Smith has lost a step or two running the bases. It's a movie of scattered chuckles before he manages to deliver his first big laugh, 45 minutes in.

Still, this is comedy packed with possibilities, many of which pay off. The black Man in Black time-travels to 1969, "not the best time for your people," J is warned. Race isn't his big problem. Racing to save victims of Boris before they get murdered is.

Brolin, as the young Western swing fan Agent K, does that "surly Elvis thing" that Jones mastered for the older K. A scattering of hippies, an impending moon shot and antique future tech (the Men in Black were ahead of their time, even then) are played for laughs.

But there's no urgency to this, no insistence to the humour.

We find out the secret behind supermodels (they're all aliens) and Andy Warhol (Bill Hader of Saturday Night Live). And we meet an alien who sees every version of the future, whose eyes moisten over the coming of the "Miracle Mets" of '69. Michael Stuhlbarg plays this fellow with a Clarence-the-Angel (It's a Wonderful Life) glimmer and sets the tone for the film's third act, which manages a lump in the throat or two.