Indiana Jones and the Crystal Numbskull

I don’t often write a review on films I don’t like. I don’t see the point of being negative unless, like warning someone there are alligators in the pool, I’m going to save them from a bad ending. Well, that’s what I’m going to do here today, save you from a bad ending. And a bad beginning. And pitifully everything between those two points.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opens without the startling energy of the past films in this franchise. It runs it’s paces from overdone mawkish, stopping to point fingers back to it’s past glories - as if collective amnesia requires this to connect us to the story - to a dawdling velocity that nearly put me to sleep before we were half-way through the second act. This film has made somewhere in the neighborhood of $650,000,000.00 worldwide, and I can’t figure out why. Maybe it’s me? Maybe I’m the only one who likes a good, fresh story idea. I don’t think so.

The problem with what I like to refer to as the “Crystal Numbskull” is that there’s no story. When I first heard this final episode was to be made I worried about hauling Ford out, dusting him off and plopping his signature hat back onto his receding hairline. Then I learned Karen Allen would return to the dueling female position. I figured at least they weren’t going to strip Harrison of all grace by matching him with a twenty-something heroine. With the addition of Cate Blanchett as Dr. Irina Spalko, more evil than Boris and Natasha combined, I was assured the protagonist would have an equally robust villainess. Finally, with direction by Spielberg and story by Lucas I just knew this was going to be the best Indiana Jones ever.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the box office. What should have been the best story in this franchise ends up being a compilation of past history. The acting is what it should be for this genre and Harrison is not made to look silly, but the from the opening, where the dialogue is truly exhausted from overuse to the end of the film where overactive CGI blows the underground kingdom to Kingdom Come, we’ve seen it all and heard it all before. If you want to see this movie wait until it comes out in DVD. Better yet, rather than drop another penny into the gross income statement just pull out your video copy of Indian Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark and watch that again and remember with satisfaction … how wonderful it was.