Day 72. 70 pages, 33,036 words.

On Friday we dropped in to see the fourth (and I hate to say it, hopefully last) installment of the Men In Black franchise. Finnkino, in their wisdom, had somehow failed to acquire a 3D IMAX copy of the movie, so we started out with an apology speech about the 2D IMAX experience to come, free Men In Black issue sunglasses and a snack coupon for every man, woman and for-the-record nine-year-old in the cinema.

To be brutally honest, that was a good start to this movie and should probably be made into a standard introduction. I don’t know if an extra dimension would have saved this movie because it still would have been flat as fuck.

Sorry Pawny. You were more amusing than Frank, but Frank went on for way too long. Agent M came close to saving the movie but she could only do the best she could with the material she was given.

Not really much to say about it. I know the main actors can do an amazing job in this genre because hello, Thor Ragnarok. But apparently there just wasn’t as much to work with in this one. Which is ridiculous, because the premise and the plot had all the ingredients. There was a cool twist. The characters were compelling. And of course the special effects and creatures and stuff were perfect.

Just … put it all together and it was somehow a bit of a disappointment. I haven’t really got the energy to go into detail, it was just a bit disappointing. With such perfect ingredients I’m just baffled that this movie didn’t do a better job. Not sure what it was. It can’t just be the absence of Smith and Jones.

Thompson and Hemsworth had it in them to be great. We know this. But instead they phoned it in like they were just paying the bills until the next Marvel movie.

I was also low-key background bothered by the way the movie title reframes and recontextualises the entire organisation. The first three movies are just about the US now, they weren’t protecting the world at all. Why this scope shift when the international element should have been there all along?

By the same shift, I’m guessing this movie will tank in the US and get terrible reviews, but that’s okay because it sort of deserves to. The actors and effects boffins deserved better.

A wait-for-DVD at best. I award this one a Men In Black 3 out of a possible Men In Black and Men In Black 2 combined. Which makes it considerably worse than Men In Black 3, just for reference. Men In Black 3 was pretty good in my opinion but you can’t – fuck all this I’m out of time.