MEN IN BLACK 3: cast turns the neuralizer on themselves

and completely obliterate their memory of how to have fun.
MEN IN BLACK 3 is a weirdly joyless experience. Weird because it shouldn't be.
All of the elements that made the first installment so much fun are present and correct;

the original stars - Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones,       
the original director - Barry Sonnenfeld,
a multitude of heavily disguised aliens in mostly working class professions and closely monitored by the Men in Black,
an extra-terrestrial threat to the future of Earth which only Agents J and K can avert.
So what's not to work?
The story is slick and inventive yet also limp and lifeless. It's not a pleasure to watch and it's certainly not funny. Will Smith reprises his role as Agent J with professionalism, and Josh Brolin is efficient as a young Agent K, but there's no real energy in the film.
The reason?
This is a franchise that's run out of steam, that's just going through the motions, and deep down inside everyone involved knows it.
Everyone that is but Tommy Lee Jones.
He's not sensing it deep down inside, he's showing it right on the surface. He's barely in the film and when he is he looks like a man who'd much rather be back on his ranch. Heaven knows how big a check was dangled in front of him in order to persuade him back for a third installment of MIB but it wasn't enough to switch him out of autopilot mode.
With Brolin playing it equally laconic and monosyllabic as Jones's younger self it's left to Smith to do the heavy lifting and expending all that exertion leaves him no energy for creative comedy. He's even farmed out the theme song to Pitbull whose uninspired sampling of Mickey and Sylvia's 'Love is Strange' is not a patch on Smith's 'Forget Me Nots' sampling 'Men in Black.'
MEN IN BLACK 3 is not a bad film but it is a disappointing one. If you come to this expecting to relive past glories you will leaving feeling cheated. The magic is missing.