Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull


I've been waiting a long time to see this movie and at the end of the day, it delivered what I needed it to.

That's the short review.

The long review? There were a few problems in the script and with the movie that I wish would have been fixed before cameras started rolling, but overall, I really enjoyed the film.

The things I didn't enjoy? The fact that nothing seemed to be at stake in the film. The world wasn't going to explode if the Soviets won. In fact, Spalko did win and the only thing that blew up was Spalko.

I didn't like the way they used Marion Ravenwood. It seemed to me as though they took too much for granted that we all knew the relationship they had before and they just started her immediately as being kidnapped. But her being kidnapped in Raiders wouldn't have been 1/10th as brilliant if they hadn't started their on-screen relationship in what I would consider to be the single best scene in any Indiana Jones movie.

I thought Mac and Ox (Ray Winstone and John Hurt, respectively) were used sloppily from a screenwriting standpoint and served purposes for individual scenes and not the movie as a whole.

A lot of people had a beef with the Monkeys, but that didn't bug me.

Yeah. I think that's the list of things that bugged me the most. I think the film worked, generally, otherwise and delivered to me the danger, escapes, spills, chills and derring-do that I needed to excite me on an "Indiana Jones" level.

Harrison Ford and Shia LeBeouf were pitch perfect in their roles and offered me my favorite action sequence in the entire film (the motorcycle chase across the college campus.)

It was fun.

It was really fun. I wouldn't mind seeing more Indiana Jones movies, and I wouldn't mind seeing them about Henry Jones, III, either.

(check out all my other movie reviews here.)

1 comment:

thebales said...

I agree with most of your review, however, I do think that the world was in danger. If the Russians held the power of the crystal skulls it would have all been over for the rest of us!
I watched a documentary on the "real" crystal skulls...very interesting. My brother is really into that kind of stuff.