Title: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Movie Review
Genre: Action/Adventure
Cast: Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Karen Allen, Shia LeBeouf
Director: Steven Spielberg
Release: (2008)
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Sounds great, right? I’m sure the script looked great to them on paper, too. But that’s because you, like them, are probably picturing all of this in your mind right now with the Indiana Jones of your youth running through the scenes. Unfortunately that Harrison Ford was no longer available for this film. So now reimagine everything I just described before, but this time with Harrison Ford’s father playing the Indy role instead. Not quite as enticing as before, now is it? (And keep in mind, that is one of the promotional photos from this movie that they released – meaning there are plenty of other screen caps of a far older and more shrunken-looking Harrison Ford from this movie that I could have used to illustrate this point, but didn’t even have to. That, right there, is one of the best promotional shots their own marketing department could find.) So you can see my dilemma. Wanting, like they and you, to be returned to my youth while enjoying this movie, I just couldn’t stop noticing how old Indy looked and how embarrassed I kind of felt for him. I’m not sure if, twenty-seven years ago when they were filming the first Raiders of the Lost Ark, they gave him that trademark fedora because they realized how handy it would be when Ford was in his mid-sixties as a way to cast shadow over the face of the twenty year-old stuntman filling in for Ford in simple running scenes – but the more little lighting and angle tricks like that that they tried to distract from Ford’s age with, the more they just ended up drawing attention to it. Again, I love Harrison Ford and I don’t mean to pile on just him here. And in his defense, there were actually a number of non-action scenes in which his smooth delivery, sarcasm, and self-deprecating humor about his own age evoked flashes of the impudent, intergalactic spice smuggler who helped his career make the jump to light speed. But not enough of them to erase the other images of a slump-chested man in ill-fitting pants, fighting off armies of men half his age with all the realism of a Vince McMahon moon landing.
And equally responsible for those scenes, as well as a number of other disappointing miscues in the eyes of an outsider looking in, are the men who should be the real stewards of this once proud franchise, Lucas and Spielberg. As far as Lucas goes, it’s hard to gauge whether his reach has finally exceeded his grasp or whether our grasp has finally caught up with his reach. What is certain is that, one way or the other, the man we all once hailed as a visionary storyteller has lost a lot of his luster in the last decade or so as a new generation of talent has passed him by and his own efforts to recapture the glory of his once great tales continue to fall well short of the mark. If anything, these efforts have exposed him even further as a 2-trick pony who can’t quite do either of his tricks anymore. (Speaking of which, do you know how many Writer credits Lucas has listed on his IMDB page over the last 31 years since Star Wars came out? Fifty. Do you know how many of those credits are not Star Wars or Indiana Jones related projects? THREE. When you put together all of his Writer, Producer and Director credits over that same 31 year period – one hundred twelve projects under his belt altogether. The number not related to the same two franchises – FIFTEEN, including a sequel to American Graffiti (“More American Graffiti”), a re-release of his USC student film counted as a Director credit, and eleven Producer credits on movies he didn’t write. That means that since the release of the first Star Wars, America’s greatest storyteller has delivered directly from his own imagination one hundred and one different stories, exactly FOUR of which are not just a repackaging of the same characters from one of his two wells.) Before stepping back and considering this, I was a little upset with Lucas for unnecessarily muddying this latest Indiana Jones script with his awkwardly forced social commentary and labored attempts to forcefeed the audience an unremarkable message about the parallels between Cold War and post-September 11th paranoia. But now, I guess I just have to blame myself for expecting something more from him.
Spielberg, however, is a whole different animal. With a resume as long as it is varied, he’s clearly the one who could have done the most to make this whole thing work. It didn’t, but I’d be hard-pressed to find too much wrong with his effort to do so. If anything, I was just really puzzled by how uneven the visuals were. It’s almost as if he had to save every penny of his budget for the (admittedly) magnificent effects in the climactic scene, at the expense of the first three quarters of the movie. There was one jungle quicksand scene earlier in the movie that I would have bet anything while watching that it had been filmed in a Chuck E. Cheese ball pit with a few leaves tossed over it. But then, to his credit, the knockout punch at the end did deliver. At worst, I can only be mad at Spielberg for not trying to talk some more sense into the other two before this whole idea got out of control.
But in the end, all I can really do is be disappointed for my own selfish reasons. I can’t blame them for wanting to get together and try to recapture a little piece of their youth. I’ve done it. I get it. Hell, as soon as I get out of this sling, I’ll probably do it again. I told you, I understand. And so do a lot of people. When we were heading out a few weeks ago to do the same thing, we all had girlfriends, wives, family members, and friends who were probably concerned and upset about it for their own reasons. I’m sure they worried about who might end up in what hospital or jail and why, as a result of four domesticated men trying to dive head-first back into the deep end of college life for one more lap. But they understood, and they couldn’t blame us for wanting to go. And we thanked them the one way we knew how – by not taking pictures. Do you see what I’m saying here, George? Harrison? Steven? Do whatever you need to do. Wear the clothes, crack the whip, clap the clapboard, blow up the sets, talk through the bullhorn, shoot the sword fighters, try to outrun the giant boulder, sit around in the personalized director’s chairs, bitch about Scientology, prank call Sean Connery, … whatever. More power to you. But remember that there are people back home who want to remember your characters the way they were. So, please, just don’t show us the pictures.
Grading
Story: D+
Acting: C
Visuals: B-
Originality/Innovation: D
Enjoyability: B-
Overall: C+
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