Friday Flicks: Will ‘Men In Black 3’ Win the Weekend?

NewsFeed's guide to the films to see (and avoid) this Memorial Day weekend.

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Men in Black 3

[youtube=http://youtu.be/IyaFEBI_L24]

Tagline: Back In Time

Was there really such a clamor for Men in Black 3? After all, it arrives on screens near you 10 years after the perfectly perfunctory sequel, which itself took five years to emerge from the shadows of the first (and inevitably best) installment.

Once again, we’re in the company of those Agents who could easily double up as solid Scrabble letters, J (Will Smith) and K (Tommy Lee Jones). But this time the usual buddy schtick is dispensed with as the plot forces them to confront the perils of time travel, which neatly throws Josh Brolin into the mix as the young K (perhaps that should be ‘k’) to Smith’s J, trying to save the earth from one of those alien invasions Hollywood scribes knock up in their sleep for fun.

TIME’s Mary Pols says that Brolin is “the only reason to see” the movie. “His Tommy Lee Jones voice is not that far removed from the George Bush voice he used in W., but he hits all those querulous notes just right. Posture, body language, Brolin nails it; his sideways glance is pure poetry of Tommy Lee-ness.” The Los Angeles Times is more enthused with the film as a whole, concluding that “1969 turns out to be a pretty good year for the men in black, making “3” campy fun if not quite a classic.” And Rolling Stone gives props to Smith as well as the new cast member: “It’s the unexpected spark between Smith and Brolin that makes MiB3 primo summer fun. Way cool.”

PHOTOS: Will Smith at the TIME 100 Party

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