Rating:
Once upon a time, Lucasfilm put out two trilogies of great movies. Everyone loved them and longed for more, but it seemed each series was destined not to go beyond three entries. Then, many years later, some sequels to one of those trilogies finally arrived. Everyone got their panties all in a bind, their bowels aroar with excitement. Then those sequels turned out to be indisputably horrible and everyone everywhere was disillusioned, most of all me. A few years later, along came a sequel to that other trilogy of great movies, a sequel called Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And saints be praised, it didn’t bite the big one like the new entries in that other series did. No, it turns out that the new Indiana Jones movie is pretty okay.

It’s by no means great, but it’s pretty okay. If you go to the theater wanting to see an above average action-adventure movie, you’ll come away satisfied. If you go to the theater wanting to see a movie that’s as good as Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you will probably be disappointed.

I’ll start by discussing some of the flaws—and unfortunately there are a few—so we can get them out of the way and move on to the good stuff. Most of the worries I had when I imagined what the movie would be like turned out to be justified. Indy (Harrison Ford, if for some reason you didn’t know) was often too extreme in the things he did, more like a superhero than the regular guy we’d come to know before, achieving his goals through equal parts resourcefulness and desperation. There was far too much lame, goofy humor, just as I knew there would be. Spielberg and Lucas both have shown, as the years have gone on, an inexplicable and ever-growing fondness for inserting scads of flat, silly attempts at jokes into otherwise serious movies, and they do it here a lot. (This should come as a surprise to no one; even Last Crusade suffered from this, and it’s only gotten much more extreme over the past two decades.)

And then there’s the problem so many movies suffer from these days, especially those that bear the stain of involvement from George Lucas: fakey-looking creatures. Among the fakey-looking creatures are some gophers that act like they were taken right out of Caddyshack, and I hated their brief moments on the screen more than anything else I’ve ever seen. But the particular bummer in the world of fakey-looking creatures as it applies to the Indiana Jones movies, is the essential “gross animal scene.” You remember them from the other movies, the snakes and the bugs and the rats. In this one we’re given some oversized, man-eating ants with a look that stretches suspension of disbelief to the breaking point. If the crazy supernatural stuff in the Indy movies doesn’t convince us, that’s okay—we know all that stuff is a trick. But something we loved about the other films was knowing that Harrison Ford and John Rhys-Davies really were surrounded by snakes or that Kate Capshaw really was shin deep in creepy crawlies. That feeling of excitement is missing from the analogous scene in Crystal Skull.

On the other hand, here’s something I was sure the movie was going to piss me off by doing but that I was relieved to find didn’t happen. I was sure that giving Indy this young pup of a sidekick, the self-styled tough guy Mutt (Shia LeBeouf), would inevitably lead up to a scene of Indy announcing, Danny Glover style, that he is too old for this shit. He’d then pass the torch to the new guy, who would go off and take care of the adventuring while Indy lived out his retirement years in blissful serenity. Much to my surprise—and delight—this scene never came; in fact, the movie ends with a visual statement that Henry Jones, Jr. will still be Indiana for a long time to come.

Of course, Mutt does turn out to be Indy’s son, which everyone has known would turn out to be the case since they first heard about the character. The fact that everyone saw it coming does not make the development any less pointless, unfortunately.

Despite my gripes (I even have a few more, but I’ll let them go), most of the movie is an enjoyable ride, certainly better than most action movies even if it isn’t as good as the other Indy flicks. The movie gives you everything you came for; in it, you’ll see plenty of thrilling stunts, adrenaline infused action sequences, exploration of dangerous temples, and patented Indiana Jones riddle-solving. An extended chase over land and water in a South American jungle is the standout action set piece, provided you ignore the moments where Shia LeBeouf transforms into Tarzan, which I intend to do. Everybody jumps from one vehicle to another and drives over cliffs and does all the stuff we want to see in a movie like this. There’s even a swordfight between Mutt and Cate Blanchett’s evil Soviet doctor that has them parrying and riposting while standing on the back of speeding automobiles, and that me like much much. A scene near the end of the movie that has Indy and his traveling companions running down a rapidly disappearing spiral staircase strikes just the right note, as well—fun in the grandest Indiana Jones tradition.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull takes a while to get going. The entire opening sequence in Nevada left me flat, and while a motorcycle chase shortly after that was pretty exciting, the movie doesn’t take off until Indy arrives in Peru and begins his search for the Crystal Skull and its associated Kingdom. Once it starts to move, though, it barrels along at a fair clip, providing the roller coaster ride we’ve all been promised without ever lagging or repeating itself so that the action becomes tedious. It keeps you entertained throughout, which is all it sets out to do. So it’s a fine way to spend two hours, and it’s mostly a good movie. The problems that arise in the course of the film aren’t grievous enough to pull this one down into the Realm of the Lousy, but they are noticeable enough to keep it from being as great as it might have been.

If you don’t like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, you will also totally hate:

If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:

• Five Days to Indy!
• Thoughts on Indy 4
• Inside My Head: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• Ninja Turtles in 2011!