“Men in Black 3” knocked “The Avengers” out of the number one spot this weekend, grossing $70 million over Memorial Day Weekend. Considering “Avengers” has made a half billion dollars in the US alone, so far, and is on track to make $600 million, we’re sure Marvel is just heartbroken.
Critics, meanwhile, thought it was about average, but better than the second one (not that that’s hard, necessarily, but still). And what’d we think?
Eh, it was OK, but it’s hard not to view the franchise as spinning its wheels. It does manage to pull off a few tricky conceits: the whole thing is built around time travel, but never becomes confusing. The casting is also spot-on; everything you’ve heard about Josh Brolin is true, but Emma Thompson and Alice Eve are both great and sadly underused, and deserve a few more props.
And thankfully, this time, they didn’t recycle the previous movie’s script. Still, it feels like Will Smith is doing this as a business move and Tommy Lee Jones only showed up because there were just too many zeroes to ignore on his check. And the ending of the movie manages to be both forced and sappy.
So, it’s good. It could just be a lot better, especially in a summer with “The Avengers” and “The Dark Knight Rises” in it.