Well! What a change of tune! I was not expecting you to blast this movie so hard; when you walked out of it a few days ago and sent me a barrage of texts detailing how much you enjoyed it, I was sure you'd rate it at least three stars. I know that I've never said "It's brilliant science fiction with a hint of Shakespearean father-son tension that resolves in one of the sweetest moments on screen in years" about a movie and then turned around and gave it a star and a half. What changed since then? Did you sneak a peak at my review when it was still in draft yesterday and get worried that your comments were a bit over-the-top, get panicked and temper your praise for my sake? Please don't... You really don't have to do that; all opinions are welcome here. Maybe you saw something in it that I didn't. I'd certainly like you to delve more into your extensive comparison between this and the 19th century Transcendentalist movement... I just didn't see it.
In all seriousness, I honestly didn't see much to praise about Boris the Animal, which seems to be what you liked most. To me he felt a little too serious. He wasn't goofy enough for this ridiculous plot, and I didn't see any tongue-in-cheek in the performance, either. That's not a knock on Jemaine Clement (who I've really liked in everything I've seen him in); I actually didn't even know that was him until after the film, because he seems to just be covered in costume and CGI, preventing anything real from coming through. I'll agree on Josh Brolin, though. He did do a great Tommy Lee Jones impression, but I'm not sure how far that compliment goes in the context of the film, considering that that's kind of all it was.
Brolin seems to be the reason this film is being received fairly well, and I don't really understand it. Even if he was good, the rest of the film is so blank... I literally did gasp when I saw how much money was spent on it, and I do feel that there is a lot of talent involved that all seem to have forgotten to go with their collective gut on what is charming, clever, and funny, because MIBIII is seriously lacking in each of those in every way. It doesn't even take advantage of its time-travel premise all that well. It might have been interesting to see comparatively low-tech 60s high-tech MIB devices, but instead, Sonnenfeld seems to have followed the logic that a sequel has to be bigger rather than that of an earlier time means smaller, but then again, when someone throws an ungodly amount of money at you to make this movie, what choice do you have? What were those silly gyro-cycle thingies we both found to be the source of the most awkward and embarrassing Men in Black 3 promo photos on the Internet?
Full disclosure: I dozed off for about seven or eight minutes in the middle of this thing, and I didn't feel like waiting around a half hour to catch the minutes I missed at another screening at the theater. It was about forty minutes in and I wasn't enjoying the film very much, and then I decided that I was just going to let go of any expectations I might have brought in with me and just try to enjoy the film for what it is... No more than four minutes later I was sleeping, so I missed everything from the Coney Island fight to young K interrogating J. I came to as J was being loaded into the big neuralizer tube.
Did I miss anything important, maybe some of those Shakespeare scenes? Can you fill me in on what I slept through? Actually, never mind... Don't tell me. I think that in my dream state the film's most repeated line may have penetrated some inner-region of my brain, so I'll just refrain from asking questions I don't want to know the answers to.
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