CRS
Chandler, Arizona, United States

There's an old saying. If you don't want someone to join a crowd, you ask them, "If everyone were jumping off of a cliff, would you?" Well, I have. So my answer would be "Yes". True story.
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Review of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Saturday, December 27, 2008

this entry brought to you by guns 'n roses, "prostitute"





When Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull initially was released this past summer, critical reaction and peer response all seemed to be about the same: meh, it was fine. But as the past six months went by, the comments have gotten much more harsh, to the point where I have been hearing a lot of people saying "It sucked. Don't bother. It's completely worthless." But don't bother? It's Indiana Jones. There's no way I could not bother. And after having seen it, these extremely harsh comments are unwarranted. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull isn't horrible, in fact, I give it the thumbs up. But "disappointed" was something I heard a lot when the movie first came out-- and that couldn't be a more appropriate word.

It's not that there was no way Kingdom of the Crystal Skull could live up to The Last Crusade. When Terminator 3 came out, that was certainly true: there was no way it was going to live up to its predecessor. Here, though, we had absolutely everybody who mattered returning: Steven Spielberg directed, George Lucas wrote the story, Harrison Ford starred. It's not that it couldn't fail, but to say that it was impossible to live up to its own heritage is selling the talent short: this could have been fantastic. And for the first half of the movie, it is. Harrison Ford, though officially a senior citizen, is still fantastic as Indie. I was afraid the movie would be filled with "I'm too old for this shit" gags, but that really only came up once. Harrison Ford still delivers the goods: the real-life equivalent of Bugs Bunny. Like Bugs, Indiana Jones is charming, sly, and even when he has to think on the go, off the seat of his pants, he is usually one step ahead of his enemies. It's impossible not not feel a good fist-pumping 12 year old inside you say "Awesome!" whenever Indiana Jones punches a guy in the face, or lassos a machine gun out of a foe's hand.

Everything about the movie's setup works well. There is a perfect balance of humor, charisma, and action in the first hour of the movie, the perfect balance of mystery and intrigue as well. Shia Lebeouf is great as Indiana Jones' removed, greaser son, and Karen Allen is as adorable and feisty as ever as Marianne, despite being nearly sixty years old. We're delivered a cold villain with Care Blanchett's Col. Spalko. Even the introduction of aliens in the Indiana Jones series didn't bother me-- and that's not much of a spoiler. I'd heard back in January that aliens were going to be involved, and I cringed. The producers went out of their way to keep the plot a secret the whole time, as if the aliens were going to be a twist at the end-- but they're not, they're introduced within the first five minutes of the movie, before we even know what the plot is. And yet even that didn't bother me.

Everything was going fetchingly until the climax. My main problem with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was that once I could tell the climax was underway, I started saying in my head, "Wait, wait-- we're ending already?" Sure, we were nearly two hours in already, but in terms of the pace of the movie, it felt like it went from two third of the way through then suddenly to the falling action without really delivering a final punch. There was an exciting car chase with a scary duel happening simultaneously, then there was the ants-- and then the climax, without really giving me that final over-the-top push into utter excitement. It felt as if Raiders would have felt had the movie ended without the snake pit, or if Last Crusade had ended with the tank chase through the middle of the desert. I felt as if the movie were bringing me along a roller coaster, and while I went through a few good bumps, I was sliding in to the end without the final, terrifying hill. It was as if they'd run out of budget and started editing it before they could shoot that last fantastic sequence.

Furthermore, the climax went far too over the top in terms of fantasy, going out-of-character in fact. The aliens didn't bug me throughout the movie until the very end where it barely felt like Indiana Jones anymore, and was smothered in CGI overdose. Blanchett went from being a promising villain to one of the most stale villains I've seen in a long while in an adventure/action movie. And it never felt like Spielberg's fault-- the whole adventure ran at a fantastic clip, but the lack of a pay off felt, I'd hate to say it because he's been such a punching bag lately, but it felt entirely like George Lucas' fault. It's as if he's lost all concept as to what made his movies special.

Still, going on a tirade about George Lucas' loss of mental capacity should be saved for another time. The point right now is that Indiana Jones took a lot of good faith from the franchise itself, but also from the first half of the movie, and just sort of wasted it-- this would've been a fine prequel to one last Indiana Jones adventure that really knocks it out of the park, but unfortunately it seems as if this will be the final Indiana Jones movie, and as is, it's fine-- but certainly disappointing.
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with love from CRS @ 7:53 AM 

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