Men In Black 3

It has been 15 years since J was recruited by K to join the Men In Black and a decade since the last time we heard from these agents.  Time has not been kind to this franchise, which really should have just stopped after the first movie.  But after such a successful original story, and huge star power from Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones you can't blame the producers for trying to recapture the magic from the original.  That is what Men In Black 3 feels like, an attempt to recapture the magic of the original instead of attempting to coming up with an original story.

Anytime a movie attempts time travel or goes to a tropical island viewers enter at their own risk, especially when the movie is a sequel.  Here J, must go back in time and save his partner from getting killed and put history back in its proper place.  So in this movie all of the fish out of water jokes from the first one are in relation to going back in time rather than learning about alien life on earth.  I can not think of a time traveling sequel that has ever been rewarding, so this movie is already up against a wall. 

The movie's humor relies on everything being dated.  That means that all the technology the agents use in the sixties are antiquated and bulky and therefore must be funny.  There are moment where it looks like there could be some genuine moments of levity, and they even touch briefly on the race issues of the sixties but are too quick to move on to a new device before any joke has the chance to settle in.  You can tell that the writing team for this movie had too many cooks in the kitchen and Etan Cohen tried pulling the best of the best instead of making every moment flow into the next one.

The bulk of the movie rests on Will Smith's back, because while K is a big piece of the puzzle, the role is shared by two different actors.  Smith seems like he is phoning this one in and is merely getting a paycheck to help his children do more projects.  Meanwhile Tommy Lee Jones literally disappears for half the movie, which may be due to the aging actor not being able to handle an action blockbuster like this anymore.  In his place is one of the few bright spots of the movie in Josh Brolin.  Brolin plays a dead ringer as a younger Tommy Lee Jones, with the good ole boy drawl and dry delivery down pat. Even if the younger actor is supposed to be in his late twenties and not his early forties the casting still works.

While Brolin was a nice surprise, what I was looking forward to most was Jermaine Clement as Boris the Animal.  I don't know what I was expecting out of him but I didn't get it.  Vincent D'Onofrio just did so spectacularly in the first one that I think they tried to replicate it.  Maybe I just wanted him to be a little goofier and I don't know bust out into song with Bret (Hi Bret), but that would be too much to ask for, I guess.  It seemed like they missed an opportunity with a brief appearance by Nicole Scherzinger or maybe I just wanted to see more of her leather dominatrix costume.  The most important part though may be Michael Stuhlbarg who provides some nice support as the last of his species who can see all the different possible futures which adds a little bit to the time traveling plot line.

Everyone keeps referencing a major past event in K's life, a moment which would turn out to be the climax of the movie.  With all that build up there was an expectation for a bigger moment.  That is this movie in a nut shell - bigger expectations.  And expectations weren't even that high for this movie, after all it was the third movie 15 years removed from the original that featured time traveling.  If you do go and see this movie, it may be a better idea to bring a neuralizer along and replace the two hours with a more pleasant memory like the one below.  D+

Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps

It has been 23 years since Oliver Stone originally introduced us to Gordon Gekko and probably 10 years since Stone has put out a decent movie. The man is best when he is angry about something. Right now America is mad about two things, the building of a mosque at the site of an old Burlington Coat Factory and the economy. But I doubt Stone is very angry about his economic stature and it shows in his sequel with one of the worst subtitles I've seen since Cradle 2 The Grave.

Michael Douglas reprises his academy award winning role as the Wall Street investor who declared at a stock holders meeting that 'greed is good." The book his character writes is titled, "Is Greed Good?" which seems to be theme of the story even though that question was answered in the first movie, and in much better fashion. But with so much star power the movie is still able to deliver some pop.

Shia LeBeouf takes the Charlie Sheen role in this one as the young investor looking to make a buck himself. And while there is not much difference between his character and the money hungry investors he works with, Stone tries to differentiate his character, Jake, by implying that he has a stopping point, that once he makes a certain amount of money he will be able to walk away. He has also attached himself to fusion energy in order to help the environment, so he can't be all bad. LeBeouf finally seems to find an adult role I don't hate him in. Or maybe my natural distrust of investors and my animosity towards them make LeBeouf the perfect match for a character that seems likeable and yet still somehow a dick.

The story is at its best when it is discussing some of the issues of the market collapse, and while some of the dialogue still went over my head I understood that there are a lot of greedy men out there who are using my money to get rich by betting on me to fail. Josh Brolin plays Bretton James, this movie's antagonist and a modern day Gekko, while the actually Gekko seems to be the moral center of the sleazebags. Bretton James is using the tricks that made headlines months ago to make most of his money. Brolin is very slick and conniving in the role and seeing as his recent movie, Jonah Hex, flopped as hard as it did it is easy to see why he wasn't out there promoting it with Douglas and LeBeouf.

The movie gets murky when it dives outside the economic pool into sub plots featuring romance, marriage, a baby and such. Carey Mulligan does most of the heavy lifting in this aspect of the film which is unfortunate as she is a wonderful actress but there is nothing she can do to save this aspect of the film. Stone, as do many people, see there is some evil goings on in the current economic system and he has something to say about it. Much like The Other Guys he doesn't want to come out and scream it at you, but rather insert some theatricality at you and hope you take something away. The Other Guys does this much better, as towards the end of the film you can see Stone screaming there is more important things than money.

The movie is kind of all over the place with the combo of business life and personal life. The reason this movie gets a sequel is due to the similarities this country faced in the early eighties, same cast of characters just a different plot. Except I hear that story everyday on CNBC with an ensemble cast starring Jim Crammer, who is way more freighting and awful to me than any character a writer can dream up. If you need to see a well done story about the d-bags on Wall Street see the original movie. The sequel is a fun movie but the wayward plot loses some of the fury that made the first one a classic. C+