But the best reason for going back in time, and really, when it comes down to it, the only reason to see Men in Black 3, is Josh Brolin, who plays young K. His Tommy Lee Jones voice is not that far removed from the George Bush voice he used in W., but he hits all those querulous notes just right. “Uh, oh,” he's always saying, “this is the one where …” 
 
 
 
 Let me say that although I liked the first “MiB” movie, I wasn't particularly looking forward to this belated sequel. MORE: Time’s Richard Corliss on W Which may be part of the reason it turns out to be so much fun.  The years off have not been kind to the Men in Black—Josh Brolin as the young, 1969 version of Agent K is the only saving grace in this uneven, long-in-the-making sequel to the sequel 
 
 Columbia Pictures 
 
 It’s silly to feel sorry for a big studio movie, especially a second sequel bound to make buckets of money, but director Barry Sonnenfeld’s Men in Black 3, arriving 15 years after his original and 10 after Men in Black 2, is so creaky and out of touch it inspires pity. Agents K (Tommy Lee Jones) and J (Will Smith) are back, but the reliable tart and taciturn vs. sweet and sassy energy between them is absent, as if they filmed their scenes independently, acting opposite puppets in front of a blue screen. J is needier than usual, while K is brooding; an alien he locked up 40 years ago, Boris the Animal (Jemaine Clement from The Flight of the Conchords), has escaped from a lunar prison and is headed back in time, to July 1969, just before the first moon walk, to kill K. 
 
 (MORE: TIME’s interview with Oscar-winning makeup artist and creature maker Rick Baker’s inspirations) 
 
 The average moviegoer is well educated in the particulars of time travel. The casting is spot-on. Not only Mr. Clement, but also Alice Eve (as Ms. Thompson’s chipper younger self), Bill Hader (as Andy Warhol, of all people) and Michael Stuhlbarg as a sweet and spacey alien who tries to help J and K. 
 
 They meet him in the summer of 1969, shortly before the Apollo 11 Moon landing and in a swirl of nostalgia as naïve as “Forrest Gump” and as knowing as “Mad Men,” but not as sour as either. J has gone there to change the course of history, and also to find K, who turns out to be Josh Brolin doing an uncanny and hilarious Young Tommy Lee Jones. Maybe there's a loophole — like if the attempt succeeds, it changes the future and turns out to be unnecessary. WITH: Will Smith (Agent J), Tommy Lee Jones (Agent K), Josh Brolin (Young Agent K), Jemaine Clement (Boris the Animal), Michael Stuhlbarg (Griffin), Alice Eve (Young Agent O), Bill Hader (Andy Warhol), David Rasche (Agent X), Emma Thompson (Agent O) and Nicole Scherzinger (Boris’s Girlfriend).
– Sure, no one was that desperate for a Men in Black 3—but it's actually a pretty good summer movie. Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones are back defending the planet from aliens, and this time, Josh Brolin's along for the ride as a young Jones. The movie "turns out to be so much fun," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. While it "carefully fulfills its blockbuster imperatives—with chases and explosions and elaborately contrived plot twists—it swerves into some marvelously silly, unexpectedly witty, and genuinely fresh territory." Writing in USA Today, Claudia Puig is impressed. "This spirited three-quel comes close to the exuberance of the first Men in Black and is a distinct improvement over its limp 2002 follow-up." Roger Ebert would go further: With "an ingenious plot, bizarre monsters," and "audacious cliff-hanging," the latest film is "better than the first one," he declares. But Mary Pols isn't so sure about the overall picture. "When it comes down to it, the only reason to see Men in Black 3 is Josh Brolin," she writes in Time. "He hits all those querulous notes just right. Posture, body language, Brolin nails it; his sideways glance is pure poetry of Tommy Lee-ness."