Men in Black 3: MIB's not aged well

There's a moment early on in Men in Black 3 when Will Smith's Agent J sits down next to his longtime partner, Tommy Lee Jones' Agent K, and bemoans the fact that he's too old for this sort of thing — for running around New York in matching dark suits, chasing down aliens and zapping them with their shiny metal weapony doo-hickeys.

We're paraphrasing a bit. But unfortunately, that's an excellent observation. We're all too old for this sort of thing — the shtick itself has gotten old, and it has not aged well.

Fifteen years since the zippy original and a decade since the sub-par sequel, we now have a third Men in Black movie which no one seems to have been clamouring for except maybe Barry Sonnenfeld, the director of all three. Long-gestating and written by a bunch more people than actually get credited, the latest film shows the glossy style and vague, sporadic glimmers of the kind of energy that made this franchise such an enormous international hit. But more often it feels hacky, choppy and — worst of all — just not that funny.

Smith and Jones don't seem to be enjoying themselves, either, in returning to their roles as bickering secret government agents. When even the most charismatic actor on the planet can't fake excitement, you know you're in trouble. (We're talking about Smith, in case you were wondering.) The puppy-doggish enthusiasm is gone, and now his Agent J is just weirdly obsessed, after all these years, with determining why it is that K is so surly. K, meanwhile, remains surly and reveals nothing.

But the most disappointing part of all: Frank the talking pug is nowhere to be found. The movie is a dog anyway without him.