May. 23 - Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of a Bunch of Stuff Happening
If you come into this movie expecting an Indiana Jones film, prepare to be disappointed. However, if you anticipate non-stop, nonsensical, deeply saturated pulp action with that signature George Lucas touch, which also happens to feature a character named Indiana Jones, then you've come to the right place!
I should note that the following contains a lot of SPOILERS!!!!!!, but if you see this for the plot then you should seriously re-evaluate your life.
Indy 4 starts out innocently enough. Drag racing. Communists. Magnetic mummies. Cate Blanchett appears as Natasha Fatale, occasionally fading into a Ukrainian accent, but more often deciding that English is just as dandy. Some things happen and it all escalates to comically unbelievable proportions, right up to Indy surviving a neukular (sic) explosion by hiding in a refrigerator (because, like Superman's x-ray vision, atomic blasts cannot penetrate the indestructible material that is lead).
It moves along swimmingly from there. The Janitor from Scrubs shows up. Indy is fired from his teaching position that he probably should have lost decades ago. Shia LaBeouf appears as Shia LaBeouf playing a no-goodnik, fulfilling his contractual obligation of playing "A Youth," and being mildly irritating in the process.
I'm not sure why LaBeouf bugs me so much. Maybe it's because he's made a career of hovering on the threshold of puberty. Or that he's younger than me and has done more films in a year than Daniel Day-Lewis has in a lifetime. Or possibly that he was in Transformers, and Transformers made money. Whatever the reason, he's in this movie, and there's nothing I can do about it.
There's a pretty entertaining motorcycle chase. Indy and his son (oh wait you're not supposed to know that yet) scuttle off on some adventures involving easy-to-learn dead languages, Peruvian insane asylums, and an indigenous population almost entirely on Amphetamines.
This is where it gets a little loopy, if you can believe it. I don't remember much between here and the boat-car chase (satisfying the well-known rules of boat-cars in film: if there is a boat-car, that fucker's getting wet), carnivorous ants and supersonic army of spider monkeys. The point is it gets there.
I recently saw an interview with Steven Spielberg, in which he talks about why his film 1941 was a critical and box office failure. What it basically comes down to is the entire movie is just a bunch of explosions, with no real purpose or motivation behind them. It's nice that he became aware of this, but despite this harsh lesson, he repeatedly ignores his own advice.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull doesn't really have characters, but people in costumes who transition from set piece to set piece. The previous Indy films did this to a certain extent, but there's something to be said for an action film that seamlessly moves through sequences in an engaging and logical fashion. It's not about Indiana Jones, but the ridiculous situations in which he finds himself. It should have been called The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull featuring Indiana Jones.
Despite my criticisms, I was reasonably entertained throughout, and Indy 4 doesn't fall into the Spielberg trap of being 30 minutes too long. It's a capably executed popcorn flick, and if it weren't attached to such a successful and groundbreaking franchise, people would probably like it a lot more. But it pales in comparison to the previous films (yes, even Temple of Doom) not because it's overwhelmingly bad, but because those were so good. Something that iconic is never going to live up to its predecessors, so you may as well accept it and watch Young Indiana Jones and the Legend of the Peacock's Eye.
Posted by Nick Nobel
