Metacritic reviews

You do sense, though, that the people behind MIB3 (mainly veteran producer Walter F. Parkes and script doctor David Koepp) were smart enough to let the audience grow up a bit, enough to get the Andy Warhol jokes and one brilliantly weird creation, a delicate alien who can see every outcome at once.

Finding smart ways to bring novelty to the franchise without forsaking what made the original so much fun (and in fact doubling down on some of those qualities), Barry Sonnenfeld's Men in Black 3 easily erases the second installment's vague but unpleasant memory and -- though we might hope producers will quit while they're ahead -- paves the way for future installments.

It's clear the filmmakers aren't simply expecting to coast on audience goodwill...Men in Black 3 is at its best when it simply owns its own absurdity.

This only mildly bloated and convoluted action comedy has enough inspired moments to wipe out memories of the abysmal 2002 first sequel as surely as one of the black-suited heroes' neutralizer.

Men in Black 3 is exactly what you'd expect: amiable mediocrity and nicely laid-back performances with pricy special effects plugging in the gaps where jokes should be.

The good news is that it's better than the second "Men in Black." The bad news is: not all that much. There are a couple of clever ideas, a few funny moments, a wealth of computer-generated special effects. But it's hollow at its core, and the asides have lost some of their spark.

More like an attempt to reenergize a franchise than rebottle the lightning that electrified the original.

Despite some good moments, Agents J, O and K are missing an E.

In a summer hardly starved of comic-book properties, this redundant extension of a series that ran out of gas a decade ago doesn't need a neuralyzer to be forgettable.

Despite such ubiquitous timidity, one can pluck out a few pleasing distractions here.