rating: ★★1/2

The third installment in the Men in Black series opened on May 25 and — just like the previous films in the series — MIB3 does not live up to its potential.

The biggest problems with the MIB films, all of which were directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, is that the villains’ personalities are incredibly flat and that the interaction between villain and hero is usually reduced to a game of cat and mouse.

While some of the aliens, like Frank the Pug, have been well-developed, the motives of their villainy are never adequately addressed.

All it seems the aliens want is to do is put an end to life on Earth. But none of the films, including the third, explain why. The source of the conflict between the two interplanetary species is never thoroughly explored.

The highlight of MIB3 is Josh Brolin. Brolin plays a young version of Tommy Lee Jones’s character Agent K.

In the sequel K’s life is threatened by Boris the Animal, played by Jemaine Clement. Agent J, played by Will Smith, must travel back in time to 1969 to save the younger K’s life.

Brolin mimics Jones’s attitude, mannerisms and speech perfectly while he carefully strips away the years that had hardened K. His performance is perhaps the most enjoyable part of the film.

Jones, meanwhile, plays a much smaller role in this film and is much more stoic than he is in the previous MIBs. This forces Smith to compensate for Jones’s lack of personality and overcompensate by becoming a caricature.

Smith’s caricaturization of J results in the agent appearing ignorant despite his many years on the job. The series was released in 1997 and presumably J has been wearing the uniform for 15 years. It doesn’t make sense that he’s still surprised by the aliens he deals with or that he wouldn’t be used to K’s lack of personality by now.

In the previous MIB films the stories are heavily focused on slapstick and gross-out humor. In MIB3 Barry Sonnenfeld makes a poor attempt to deepen the relationship between partners J and K. The result of this is that instead of being funny, the newest film in the series turns out to be unexpectedly sad.

MIB3, which earned $28.1 million in its opening weekend, is much the same as the previous films in the series — enjoyable but uninventive. I recommend waiting for it to be released on Netflix.

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Image: Supplied