Men In Black 3 Has Got The MIB Mojo Back

Filmmaker Barry Sonnenfeld, who worked with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones on the 1997 film 'Men in Black,' has united with the duo for 'Men in Black 3,' which will be released in theaters on Friday.

In the latest film in the franchise about the exploits of two secret agents who maintain order among aliens living on Earth disguised as humans, Smith's Agent J must travel back in time to 1969 to save his partner, Agent K, played by Jones in the present and Josh Brolin in the past.

"Men in Black 3" has got the MIB mojo back — well, most of it anyway. With Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones once again suited up and sporting shades as agents J and K, and a casting coup in Josh Brolin playing K's younger self, the latest alien crisis is good trippy fun as the fate of Earth, and '60s retro style, hang in the balance.

Director Barry Sonnenfeld, who's been onboard from the first film, has recovered some of the brashness and all of the unbridled affection for the weird, wonky otherworldly types that made the initial 1997 cosmic comedy such a kick. "3" is a more restrained affair, but it kind of suits the guys now that an entire decade has passed since the disappointing "Men in Black II." Let's just let that poor sap rest in peace.

Sonnenfeld spoke to Reuters about the latest collaboration, the addition of Brolin to the cast and the three films.

A few days before "Men in Black 3" opens in theaters across the U.S., its cast members and director took some time to discuss the big challenge of applying time travel as the major plot in the sci-fi movie. Chatting with MTV News, they admitted that applying "time travel" element in a movie was really tricky.

Director Barry Sonnenfeld also admitted that bringing back Smith and Jones to "MIB 3" was easier than working with the time travel concept. "Coming up with ideas and plots and stories for aliens was easy," he added, "but time travel was really hard." He said, "Every time you think you have it figured out, you would wake up at three in the morning and think, 'But wait, if I kill him, wouldn't he ....' You have to start all over again!"

Based on the Malibu Comic by Lowell Cunningham, "Men in Black 3" focuses on Smith's Agent J as he goes back in time to team up with young K. The action comedy movie is scheduled to open wide in the U.S. on May 25.

Fortunately, there are other reasons that the past is a blast, thanks to "3's" screenwriter Etan Cohen, a "Beavis and Butthead" alum and a co-writer of the dark farce "Tropic Thunder." Cohen likes messing around with convention and he does a nifty job letting a vintage vibe overtake most of the movie, with director of photography Bill Pope ("Matrix"), production designer Bo Welch (all "MIBs" and much more), Oscar-winning visual effects whizzes Ken Ralston and Jay Redd, and master creature creatorRick Baker more than happy to find themselves in a kind of retro heaven.

As it happens, 1969 was a very busy year with space travel, sports, hippies and more providing the filmmakers a lot of fodder to futz with. The main conduit for keeping this fairly complicated story straight comes in the form of Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg). The actor, who was excellent as the much-tested martyr at the center of the Coen brothers'"A Serious Man," is completely captivating here as a sweet alien nebbish whose special effect is his multi-platform memory — basically he knows all the possible scenarios for what happens next, depending on what happens now.

Smith has always been the glue that held MIB together, and he does so again in "3." Here's the difficulty. The very winning wide-eyed, wise-cracking rookie Smith introduced in the original "MIB" made for a hard act to follow, even for the actor. Both he and the movie get some of the swagger back here. But for fans, the exhilaration of experiencing the original's inventiveness for the very first time — well that ship has sailed. Still, 1969 turns out to be a pretty good year for the men in black, making "3" campy fun if not quite a classic.