Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
Indiana Jones/Kingdom of Crystal Skull 
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: Hollywood icon Harrison Ford returns to the role of the adventurous archaeologist Indiana Jones nearly 20 years after he last donned the famous fedora and bullwhip to save the world from imminent peril. Joining Ford for this latest installment of the Steven Spielberg-George Lucas collaboration are Academy Award winner Cate Blanchett, Ray Winstone, Jim Broadbent, Karen Allen, John Hurt and Shia LaBeouf as Jones’s headstrong young sidekick.
REVIEW: A more apt title for Indy 4 might have been “Indiana Jones and the Crusade of the Raiders of the Temple of the Last Doomed Crystal Skull” or, better yet, “Indiana Jones: Been There, Done That”. It’s not so much a sequel as a remake; it’s not that it’s a bad film, it just seems unnecessary. You know, like Godfather 3.
I really didn’t mind that Indy was older, everybody knows it and the film acknowledges this right away with lots of (mostly lame) “old fart” jokes and Ford was in good form, as are all the actors. The filmmakers recognize this by casting Shia Lebeouf to try to get the younger audience interested, but ultimately it still just felt like more of the same old same old. There are some pretty lame sequences in the beginning, a chase scene on a motorcycle on a college campus seems very tired and a bit later there’s a long expository sequence in a graveyard that seems to go on forever with lots of silly blah blah about riddles and legends and very little interesting action.
Finally, about an hour and fifteen minutes into the movie, there’s a long chase/fight sequence through the jungle on military vehicles that manages to recapture some of the spirit of the previous films; it’s like Spielberg suddenly woke up from a nap and managed to invest some energy into something worthwhile. It’s a fun, funny, exciting chase; unfortunately that’s about it. The movie then gets into the third act when they reach the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and we know exactly what is going to happen because it’s the end of Raiders with different sets and we wait for this and that to happen and it goes just as we expect. The moment when the villain gets what she wants and – SURPRISE! – has her face melted must be one of the classic anti-climaxes of all time. Gee, we never saw that one coming…
The writer, David Koepp, is a very good writer of some very good action movies. I think the problem w/IJ4 is a perfect example of the classic “screenplay-by-committee”, of playing it safe. The original movies were a nostalgic take-off of the old serials from the 30’s and
40’s, while IJ4 is a take-off of the old Indy films – a rehash of a rehash and that’s exactly what it feels like. They should have just re-released the originals.
2 stars
Harold
