Men in Black 3: Better Than the First?

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."

(More Men In Black stories.)