So, they made another Men in Black movie. It's actually a little surprising to me, considering that it had been 10 years since MIB II and if memory serves, it wasn't really all that well received. At least by me. I didn't care for #2...it seemed the story really wasn't that great and it wasn't as much fun as the first one. Actually, I can remember nothing about #2, other than J went to find K who was working at the post office with a bunch of aliens...I don't remember the main villain or anything. Needless to say, didn't even see it in the theatre which is dry, considering Men in Black 1 was one of my first DVD's. So, I went to see this one and you know what?
It actually was pretty good! I don't think it was as good as the first one for sure, that movie is just so much fun, it's ridiculous. However, this one is pretty good, nevertheless. There's a ton of aliens again and there's a lot of humour as well, I think the humour fell sort of flat in MIB 2, but it really works on this one. I find that Smith and Jones are pretty good foils for one another and the fact that Tommy Lee Jones plays everything dead straight no matter how ridiculous the situation is just awesome. His eulogy for Zedd is great!
I was a little nervous about him going back in time because you would lost the whole Smith/Jones dynamic and it's true, I don't think Brolin and Smith are as good together as Smith and Jones, but then again, Jones' face is impossible to duplicate. I will say this for Brolin though, his impression of Tommy Lee Jones is scary and I mean SCARY good. When he was talking, if you closed your eyes, you would think it was Tommy Lee Jones speaking. It's that insane.
The storyline is okay, the main villain is actually really memorable (the wildman Kieran from Dinner for Schmucks) and it has a nice nostalgia to it as most of the film takes place in 1969. That means the MIB run into Andy Warhol, there's more racism, the cars are different, the technology is different, it's just a different time and place and I guess it was one way to breathe life back into the franchise. To be honest, I think this might be the end of the Men in Black films, at least in this incarnation and if so, then they wrapped everything up really well.
If you skipped this one because you weren't that impressed with #2, that's perfectly understandable. Men in Black II was a huge misstep, but they're back with a vengeance in this one and they really went out and tried to make this movie fun again. There's a lot of aliens, there's gadgets and there's laughs. That's all you really need in these types of movies. So, catch in on DVD if you can, it's one of those movies that doesn't try and be anything other than a fun movie and really, what more can you ask?
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
- Stephenstein
So, Total Film tried to slip this one on us. 2 for 1! That's right, they lumped both Matrix sequels in on the most hated films of all time. Nice try, but this one seems like a slam dunk. Sure, the online internet population may hate on these two movies (something that actually annoys me...more on this later), but are these two movies really hated?
See, I wasn't that huge a fan of The Matrix. Back when it came out, everyone was pumped up for it. People emulated the look of the characters in the movie (long dark trenchcoats, wrap-around sunglasses) and the infamous bullet-time photography was spoofed and stolen all over the place. Like I said, I wasn't a huge fan...I mean, the movie was good and it had it's points for sure, I would not take that away from it, but people were all excited about this movie's action scenes, when frankly, the guy who choreographed this film had done tons of Asian films. It wasn't like he was saving his best stuff for North America or anything, it was just what he did, but no one had seen this before because quite plainly, a lot of people here are really, really ignorant about world cinema.
Anyhow, I wasn't dying for the two Matrix movies. When they came out, yeah they were boring and obtuse, it seemed to be reaching for a higher goal than the films could actually attain (or audiences were willing to put up with...I mean let's face it, people mostly remember the action scenes from the Matrix, not the religious allegories). Anywhoo, the movies made a mint at the Box Office and people seemed to be talking excitedly about the highway scene from Reloaded and the 1000 Mr. Smith fight from Revolutions. Then boom, before you know it, these movies are hated. At least, according the idjit at Total Film who came up with this list in the first place.
The fact is, there were two initial big sellers in Blu-Ray sales: The Dark Knight and The Matrix Trilogy. You can say all you want about how there wasn't much initial selections and this and that and the other thing, the fact is, people were WAITING for this film trilogy to hit Blu-Ray and they were snapped up as soon as they hit shelves. For the longest time I would wander into a store and I'd be damned if I can even find a Matrix trilogy set. When you lump in a bunch of movies with Dark Knight, you know you're getting into heady stuff. Don't give me the "they just wanted 1" thing either, because then they could have just waited for individual releases or hell, just held on to their DVD copies, I mean if they hated 2 and 3 so much, why double dip on the whole damned set?
I got a book off Deceptisean named Film Classics. It talks about (are you ready?) classic films from different eras. You know what he talks about in the book? The Matrix Series, that's right, 1, 2 and 3 and he praises all three films to the hilt. For some guy to put all three movies in a book about film classics and then have it published? To me, that's already showing that those movies aren't hated.
Rating: Worth the hate? They're not hated. Period.
- Stephenstein
