Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

This long Memorial Day weekend the family and I took a couple of hours to feast our eyes upon the fourth Indiana Jones installment. And, after a couple of days to digest the latest Spielberg/Lucas offering about oblong Crystal Skulls, I've boiled the film down to one word... silly.

The film is really just plain silly.

Not intriguing. Not trend setting. Not record breaking. Not excellent. Just silly.

I don't want to get too much into the plot, because it will give too much away, but... really? That's the best you could come up with in twenty years? Really? Just how hard did you try?

Rumor has it that Frank Darabont, the excellent writer who penned and directed The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, as well as wrote various TV episodes of the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, also came up with the first real script for Indy IV. Spielberg apparently loved it, but Lucas did not.

So, Lucas and David Koepp put their brains together and came up with a story that really offers nothing original, unless of course you believe that taking story ideas from a whole bunch of previous movies (Apocalypto, National Treasure 2, Close Encounters, Raiders of the Lost Ark) and mashing them into a new movie constitutes being "original."

What they came up with is... well, silly.

However, even the weakest of story ideas, bolstered by the immense talent of Spielberg and the star power of Harrison Ford, suddenly become enjoyable and alive. Add the acting and screen chops of Cate Blanchett and Shia LaBeouf and the film becomes a nice cinematic ride.

Blanchett's character, however, offers her few opportunities to shine. Now that I think about it, she's supposed to be some sort of Ruskie mega-psychic, but I can't really remember her being successful at ever using those abilities.

Odd choice.

And only LaBeouf's character, Mutt, brings any real emotion to the film. All of the other characters simply move through the set dressings, seemingly unaffected by the amazing events that have transpired around them.

There were some other things that still bother me a bit as well. I don't know if it was due to the quality of the film print I saw or not, but the special effects looked really cheesy. I never once thought anyone was in real danger, especially during an extended car chase scene, because the effects were so obvious... odd for a Spielberg/Lucas collaboration.

And the demise of the baddies was all too familiar. The lead baddie and the lead henchman all meet their maker in events that could have been taken directly from Raiders... granted, the actual demise is different, but the the structure, the way it all unfolds made me feel like I had been here before. And that was because I had... in a far superior movie.

So, in spite of its vastly weak storyline and razor thin character development, the film is still a lot of fun simply because Spielberg, Ford and LaBeouf make it so.


So, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a fun movie, but you may find that the National Treasure films do a better job in the genre right now.

Spielberg and Lucas have left the door open for LaBeouf to take over the Indy reigns and that would be very, very cool. He's a great young actor and could bring new life into a growing, familiar genre.

Otherwise, you can wait for the next National Treasure release to get your next historical fantasy fix.