Agents J (Will Smith) and K (Tommy Lee Jones) are back... in time. K's life and the fate of the planet are put at stake,and Agent J travels back in time to put things right. J discovers that there are secrets to the universe that K never told him - secrets that will reveal themselves as he teams up with the young Agent K (Josh Brolin) to save his partner, the agency, and the future of humankind.
This is Will Smith's first film in 3.5 years, since the release of Seven Pounds (2008). This is the longest he has gone without appearing in a movie since his film career started in 1993.
Both Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones have said that they would "consider" appearing in a Men in Black 4.
The number CRM-114 makes two appearances in this movie in the form of text that appears on the outside wall of the Lunar Max prison (seen after Boris breaks out) and the ID for the bunker on the beach at Cape Canaveral. These numbers are a nod to director Stanley Kubrick, who used this number in his movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
The zip line escape system shown at the Apollo launch pad really did exist. It was installed for the Apollo program and enhanced for the Space Shuttle program. In some pre-launch emergency scenarios, the crew would have ridden steel cages down the zip lines to explosion-proof bunkers. Astronauts practiced using the system as part of their training, but it was never used in an actual emergency.
Cameos:
Barry Sonnenfeld is one of the people watching the Apollo 11 launch on a couch, drinking a cup of coffee.
Lady Gaga is a holographic monitor as Agent J searches for Agent K in the MIB headquarters.
Rick Baker (Special makeup effects artist) is an alien with an exposed cranium.
Judy Murdock (Will Smith's personal makeup artist ) is a blue-skinned alien.
Will Arnett is J's alternate timeline partner Agent AA.
It manages, in the end, to be touching as well as hectic and whimsical, and to send a few interesting thematic bubbles into the air, having to do with lost fathers, obscure regrets and racial reconciliation. Reviewed by: A.O. Scott of The New York Times.
Delight, a modest yet palpable measure of the stuff, is restored. Reviewed by: Rick Groen of The Globe and Mail (Toronto).
Although I liked the first "MiB" movie, I wasn't particularly looking forward to this belated sequel. But I had fun. It has an ingenious plot, bizarre monsters, audacious cliff-hanging, and you know what? A closing scene that adds a new and sort of touching dimension to the characters of J and K. Reviewed by: Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times.
The effects are cheese-whizzy fun, but it's the unexpected spark between Smith and Brolin
that makes MiB3 primo summer fun. Way cool. Reviewed by: Peter Travers of Rolling Stone.
Despite such ubiquitous timidity, one can pluck out a few pleasing distractions here. Reviewed by: Nick Pinkerton of The Village Voice.
