MOVIE REVIEW: 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull'

From the May 20 Oregonian....

"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" feels like an old romance re-kindled. The pleasure is still there, informed by nostalgia, but that pleasure is also ... complicated. Messier.

On balance, the first new "Indiana Jones" movie in 19 years is perfectly amusing. There are moments -- particularly in the film's first third -- that recapture the magic of the most beloved adventure series in movie history. Back in the hat and cracking the whip, Harrison Ford is brighter-eyed than he's been in a movie in a very long time. The paranormal mystery is fairly compelling, even if it loses some juice by swapping religious significance for sci-fi significance. There are funny moments, cool-looking villains and a couple of clever, easy-to-follow action set pieces that remind you just how good director Steven Spielberg can be at this sort of thing.

But there are also disappointments. Not "Phantom Menace"-level epic failures, mind you, but disappointments.

The film juggles way too many underdeveloped characters. There are silly, tension-undermining jokes involving monkeys and prairie dogs. There are too many shout-outs to previous films in the series. The script sets up big-deal relationships -- even bringing back Indy's one true love, Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) -- but does almost nothing with those relationships during its all-running, all-riddle-decoding final third.

Is "Crystal Skull" a flawless resurrection? No. Is it a lame reminder of our own mortality, revealing Spielberg to be an old duffer who's lost his touch? Absolutely not. Like every "Indiana Jones" sequel, it has its problems. It's a little cluttered, frankly, and the finale feels rote when it shouldn't. But it's also too diverting to call it a failure.

More thoughts after the jump.

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After the goofiest Paramount-logo-to-real-object transition of the entire series (it owes more than a little to "Caddyshack" -- you'll see what I mean),  the movie gets off to a surprisingly strong start.

It's 1957. Dr. Jones has been captured by a team of Cold War Russians led by Agent Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), an alleged psychic with a jet-black bob, a sword and a spotless grey jumpsuit. The Commies take Indy to a warehouse familiar to any "Raiders of the Lost Ark" fan, then force him to locate a magnetized box.

What follows is a funny, beautifully staged action sequence -- it's classic Spielberg popcorn cinema, really. And it sets up an intriguing tension that the rest of the movie never fully explores. It's the age of diners and bobbysoxers and the nuclear family, and Indiana Jones' glory days are behind him. His exploits are slowly being lost to history. He is the artifact. Even the government he helped in WWII, now caught up in the Red Scare, is beginning to forget and distrust him.

Just as Jones looks ready to resign from teaching and slip into obscurity, a surly young greaser named Mutt (Shia LeBeouf) turns up needing help -- and gives Jones a chance to revisit his legacy.

Spoiling the details of the rest of the adventure would be unfair. I'll just say it's fun, but it's also never as good as that opening scene. It crudely stitches together all the exciting parts of several prior screenplay drafts commissioned by producer George Lucas over the last two decades. And it presses, or tries to press, all the pleasure buttons of an Indiana Jones movie.

Everything a fan might want is here, executed with varying degrees of success. There's a spooky artifact with vaguely defined power. There are creepy-crawlies (though they're now computer-generated). There are animated lines on maps. There's a brutal fight with a big ugly henchman. There's a reunion with Marion that's more bicker-y than romantic. There's a long, long chase with trucks and swordfighting and punching and jumping and (alas) vine-swinging and monkeys. Yes, monkeys. Codes are decrypted. John Williams makes a lot of lushly orchestrated martial noise on the soundtrack. The cinematography is old-school. And the ending is huge, or at least took up a great deal of hard-drive space.

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So why is it all just a little ... uninvolving?

Everyone is working overtime to entertain here. There's a real nothing-but-desserts generosity to "Crystal Skull." It's not even remotely embarrassing as a comeback attempt.

But every sequel to the nearly perfect "Raiders of the Lost Ark"  is damaged in a different way. This is no exception.

"Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" had terrible dialogue and screechy sidekicks. "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" had dull villains and a jokey lack of tension. "Crystal Skull" simply has too much of everything -- too many effects, too many characters, too long a middle, too many explanations and too many set pieces stretching too much credulity.

Much of "Skull"'s final third is a frenzied chase, and a great deal of promising character stuff gets lost in the shuffle -- leaving you feeling at arm's length from the story. In the film's single biggest disappointment, poor Karen Allen gets to do little more than yell, smile, drive a truck, and change her mind completely about Indy in the space of a single sentence. John Hurt  and Ray Winstone  don't get much of a chance to register as messed-up sidekicks. And LeBeouf's cranky relationship with Indy all but disappears, just as it was starting to echo Ford's cranky relationship with Sean Connery in "Last Crusade."

(There are quite a few instances of this sort of thread-dropping. Here's another, smaller example: We're told Spalko is psychic, but never actually see her use her psychic powers.)

In short, the final third feels less like a Spielberg "Indiana Jones" film and more like a better-made cross between "The Mummy" and (forgive me) "National Treasure" -- full of computer-generated special effects and puzzle-solving and generic running around, but without the deeper sense of dread or wonder that marks a classic Indy adventure.

Putting it another way: The movie's pretty good. Occasionally it's very good. But I also kind of hope they don't make another one.
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B; 122 minutes; rated PG-13 for adventure violence and scary images.

'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull' (The Oregonian, May 20, 2008)

Comments

[Christian Toto]

Good review. Fair, but tough. It would be easier to scorn if it were terrible, but it's not. I just can't see 'why' they made it after seeing it myself. What was it about this story, this script, that convinced them to make the movie? Why bring back Marion and do nothing with her? Can't somone with the clout of a Spielberg find a better script?

[D. K. Holm]

Apparently there was a better script. MIke mentioned on the radio that a friend of his in Los Angeles read the Frank Darabont script and that reader said it was way better than the film we have now. In any case, another excellent review from Mr. Russell; writing that Indy now is the artifact is priceless.