Brikar

"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull"
Starring: Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Shia LaBeaufalksdfajlsdkfajsdlueaf
Written by: George Lucas and David Keopp
Directed by: Steven Spielberg

MOVIE
Mixed feelings. That's the best way to describe the fourth, long-awaited entry into the Indiana Jones series. Let's start with the pros: It's great to have Indiana Jones back again. Seeing Harrison Ford in costume, throwing that whip around and punching baddies is a real treat. Spielberg throws some great imagery in there, and John Williams' score is always welcome.

Cons? While Harrison Ford LOOKS great in the role, he's not bringing his A-game to the part this time. That might be because he's just so old, or maybe it's because the script is so flimsy and barely gives him anything worth working with.

"Crystal Skull" starts off well enough with Indy and his friend Mac being dragged out of the trunk of a car by Russian soldiers who've infiltrated Area 51 in the late 1950s. Indy is told to look for a box that he helped inspect a decade earlier from Roswell, New Mexico. When he's presented with an opportunity to escape, he takes it and what follows is the movie's best set piece - a multi-tiered chase through the vast warehouse from the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" on foot, car, and even rocket sled.

It's unfortunate that the movie never manages to top this great sequence, though a jungle chase towards the movie's climax comes close. The race to recover a crystal skull and return it to a legendary city of gold isn't constructed nearly as taughtly as Indy's previous quest for the Holy Grail, and instead seems to merely provide a loose framework of mildly interesting action sequences and obvious character revelations. The ultimate revelation of the skull is so out of whack with previous Indiana Jones adventures that one wonders just why any of this is happening at all, and when coupled with the fact that the film is absolutely over-laden with cartoonish CGI, "Crystal Skull" ultimately feels more like George Lucas' terrible "Star Wars" prequels than anything else.

The style of "Crystal Skull" mirrors that of "Revenge of the Sith" - it presents a sequence which could be very cool, and for some time actually is, before suddenly going so over-the-top silly that it simply gets ruined. This happens in the initial warehouse chase with the rocket sled, the atomic test with the refrigerator, the college chase with the library, the jungle chase with the monkey swinging, and so on and so forth.

By the time you get to the flimsy climax with its technobabble about inter-dimensional portals, and Marion Ravenwood has randomly shown up and added absolutely nothing to the proceedings, it's only that sense of nostalgia that Ford and Spielberg bring to the proceedings that keep the entire thing from falling apart entirely.

But that nostalgia is a powerful thing. There's just enough Indiana Jones here to keep the thing from feeling as utterly dull and insipid as the "Star Wars" prequels were, and it doesn't manage to become as outright retarded as "Revenge of the Sith". "Crystal Skull" is easily the weakest of the four Indiana Jones flicks, even the particularly gruesome "Temple of Doom" with it's weird Thuggee cults, blood-drinking and excruciatingly annoying female lead.

VIDEO
It's not well-written, but it sure looks fabulous. Details are sharp, colors are vivid, blacks have fine detail. There's just nothing to complain about here.

AUDIO
The same can be said for the audio. There's lots of great, familiar sound effects and music to fill your room, and some excellent bass for your subwoofer.

EXTRAS
The prime extra here is a feature-length production diary on the second disc. It takes the viewer from the beginning of principal photography all the way through to the end. It's an entertaining look behind the scenes, with plenty of interviews and set footage to dig into what went into making a $150 million summer flick.

There are also featurettes covering preproduction, post production, and visual effects. I'm not sure why these are given their own separate featurettes instead of simply being included in the main documentary, but, there you have it. They're just as good as the main doc, just separate for some reason. There's also a featurette that looks at "iconic props", though it focuses more on props for "Crystal Skull" than on the series as a whole, which the title seems to imply it would. Still, there are nice bits of info like how Indiana's satchel bag is from the previous films instead of being new, and a look at the Ark brought out of storage for a cameo appearance also instead of being replicated.

There are several trailers included, and an XBox360 demo for "LEGO Indiana Jones", which I can't use, as a Playstation owner.

OVERALL
The movie is weak, but nostalgically entertaining. The special features, however, are great. Much like with the "Star Wars" prequel DVDs, I found myself more engrossed in all the behind-the-scenes work than the final product of it.

SCORE
MOVIE: C+
VIDEO: A
AUDIO: A
EXTRAS: A
OVERALL: B

__________________
"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

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Closet Racist

I've heard such bad things about it that I'm afraid to sit through it. Maybe if I can find a cheap blu-ray...

__________________

Brikar

I'm not gonna lie, it's not a good movie. But it doesn't quite fall into the same traps as the "Star Wars" prequels, and as such, is more enjoyable. It may simply be because Spielberg is a far better director than Lucas ever was, and is able to wring just a bit more fun out of the proceedings.

__________________
"A million monkeys typing until the end of time will produce the complete works of William Shakespeare. Ten thousand monkeys typing for ten thousand years will write a Hemingway. Ten monkeys typing over Columbus Day weekend will give you a Dan Brown."

http://olympusmans.blogspot.com
http://benforrealz.blogspot.com