It’s a shame a few strong utterances of language and the fact the film crosses the acceptable level in violence on our content chart occurs in this movie because it is an imaginative and, at times, laugh-out-loud picture. Emma Thompson plays Agent O in the movie and she is hilarious in a scene in which she describes what an alien said about a deceased agent at his eulogy. Her alien sounds and weird noises have to be heard to be appreciated but she elicited strong laughter from the audience I screened the film with. Then there’s Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith, who still have strong chemistry and are quite funny themselves. Jones, playing Agent K, speaks about the deceased agent himself and says, “I knew him a long time. I was never invited over to his home for dinner. I never saw him out of work. Thank you.” And then he steps down. Funny stuff for sure. I do want to note that Josh Brolin is amazing as a younger Agent K. He has Jones’ voice and expressions down pat.
Smith as Agent J has to travel back in time when a decision Agent K makes results in an alternative present time and K is dead in the changed time frame, having died forty years ago. Agent J is determined to restore what went wrong and bring Agent K back home to the present, alive and well. He learns something which is surprising to him and helps him understand his partner better than he ever has but we will not plot spoil. Due to the language and violence issues, we have to pass on awarding our Dove Seal to the movie as a family-friendly-film and that’s too bad. We wish the filmmakers would have held back a little with the content so we could have done just that.