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Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
by Bill Wine
Ah, what that relentless rolling boulder in Raiders has wrought.
RATING: PG-13
GENRE: Action-adventure thriller
RELEASE DATE: May 22, 2008
RUNNING TIME: 2 hours and 4 minutes
VIOLENCE FACTOR: There is plenty of what might be described as "adventure violence" and a few frightening images that make the film inappropriate for very young or impressionable grandchildren.
BAD WORDS: No
RACY? No
GRANDS:
CRITIQUE:
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull arrives 27 years after Raiders of the Lost Ark burst on the scene in 1981, immediately raising the bar for breathlessly paced action-adventure flicks while at the same time launching a parade of pale imitations.
The first two sequels Raiders spawned — Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade — were also released in the 1980s, which means that younger grandchildren have probably not witnessed the exploits of iconic archeology professor/intrepid adventurer Indiana Jones on the big screen.
Indy number four is another collaboration among director Steven Spielberg, star Harrison Ford, and writer-producer George Lucas.
It's set in 1957, during the Cold War. Indy and his young sidekick, played by Shia LeBeouf, are on their way to the Peruvian jungle, in search of the legendary Crystal Skull of Akator, said to have mind-controlling powers. That's why it's also being sought by Soviet agents, led by a menacing parapsychologist played with relish by Cate Blanchett.
When Harrison Ford steps back into Indiana Jones's signature leather jacket and fedora, still gripping and cracking that bullwhip, it's as if he's never been away. And the fact that he's two decades older now is an art-imitating-life thrust that the script not only acknowledges but embraces, turning it into a running gag. As for his reunion with Karen Allen, who reprises female lead Marion Ravenwood, it pays dividends both as nostalgia and as a layer of audience-pleasing sentiment.
But it's the thrills and chills that the audience wants and that's what Spielberg delivers, concentrating on vigorous stunts rather than computer-generated special effects, even if he does spill over to the preposterousness a few too many times. World-weary but still ready to do body-sacrificing battle with younger adversaries, athletic Indy escapes from armed soldiers who outnumber him by plenty, spills over a series of precipitous waterfalls, outruns an atom bomb, escapes giant carnivorous ants, survives being stuffed in a car trunk, leaps from a speeding car onto the back of a speeding motorcycle, and survives an encounter with a fearsome snake. But bullets, even from close range, never quite seem to find him, and none of these life-threatening incidents leaves as much as a troublesome scar, let alone a permanent injury. So we do notice that Indiana Jones occasionally seems an indestructible cartoon character, but we're having far too much fun to mind.
If your PG-13-ready grandkids already know the other Indy flicks from video, don’t let them miss this one. If they don’t, same advice.
GP Rating System:
Three Grands = Bravo, don't miss it.
Two Grands = Good enough, don't dismiss it.
One Grand = Okay, even if we dis it.
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