DEZ REVIEWS: "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"

Why is it that everything George Lucas touches these days (hell, the past two decades or so) turns to crap? He forever marred the perfect memories of the Star Wars saga with his new prequel trilogy. And now this. Although, to be honest, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is the only worthwhile film in the Indiana Jones series. In fact, it is one of the most perfect action films ever made. The second one was universally acknowledged as crap. The third one is loved by many for some reason, I guess it was mainly due to the stunt casting of Sean Connery as Indy's dad. But, really, it was crap too and a total retread of the first one. You would think with Steven Spielberg directing each of the Indiana Jones films, that would at least provide a high quality filter from Lucas's crapiness. But not so.

I appreciate that these are supposed to be homages to the pulp comics and Saturday morning adventures of yesteryear. So things are not supposed to be exactly realistic. Yet when watching "Raiders of the Lost Ark", I could at least talk myself into believing that "yeah, OK, a guy could probably survive that." But throw any semblance of plausibility out the window here when Jones walks away from an A-BOMB BLAST when he is almost at ground zero.

Fine, even so. If it is done well and has some unexpected twists and turns, then I can forgive the implausibility. Nothing is surprising or done particularly well here. As Indy says himself, "same old, same old". The 36 or so jokes about Indy's age were totally unnecessary, you could see it for yourself on the screen. Harrison Ford, once so charming and gritty as one of the great action heroes, looks tired and like he's going through the motions to collect his paycheck. Karen Allen returning as Marion Ravenwood (the only interesting female character of the entire series) was welcome, but even she was not given too much to do this time around. Her character has lost all of the fire and maddening stubborness that made her Indy's match in the first film. Shia LeBouf does a fair job as Indy's heir apparent, considering the script he was given to work with.

I commend Spielberg for kicking it mostly old school and using real stuntmen vs. all CGI. That was refreshing. Although, the CGI that is used is pretty bad and completely ruins the spirit of the old films. CGI has no place in an Indiana Jones film.


ABOVE: Cate Blanchett's evil Russian: "I vill keel you if you don't give me vat I vant!" Or something along those lines. Harrison Ford thinking: 'when do I get paid?'

I find it astounding that Lucas, Spielberg and Ford pushed this film off for over a decade because they claimed that they could not settle on a script or story that was up to Indy's standards. So they greenlit this? This convoluted, tired, cliched story? My god, how bad were the scripts that they passed over? The villains here are evil Russkies vs. the old standby Nazis. It's 1957 instead of the World War II years. But that doesn't really matter. They still have those bad guy accents and expendible uniformed henchmen who can't hit the side of a barn with all of their firepower. Come on, if they are shooting at Indiana Jones from about 15 feet away with machine guns, at least let him get hit in the arm or something. I saw almost every ambush or cocked-gun-sound-behind-someone's-back-just-as-they-are-about-to-do-something-important coming before any of these characters did. Why? Because I've seen the other three movies. You'd think Indiana Jones would have figured that out by now as well.

Man, I need to go watch my "Raiders of the Lost Ark" DVD to remind myself why Indiana Jones was so special in the first place.

** out of *****