Indiana Jones and the Sharp Decline of Steven Spielberg

[SPOILER ALERT – The following review of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is meant more for people who have already seen it, and I mention a scene or two in this blog, so if you haven’t seen it and/or don’t want to know anything about it, do not read any further.]

Expectations are a funny thing. When I first heard that there was going to be a new Indiana Jones movie, I had high expectations based on the franchise’s prior successes. Then, when I heard Shia La Poof was going to be in it, my expectations were lowered quite a bit. Then, when a friend told me that it was terrible, my expectations were lowered even further. So I went to see the movie (I couldn’t resist) knowing that my expectations had practically reached their lowest possible point, and it therefore began to creep into my head that the movie might actually slightly exceed those expectations, resulting in slightly higher expectations, which turned out to be much higher expectations than I should have had. It’s all very complicated, but the bottom line is that it resulted in total non-enjoyment. Although I think that to enjoy this movie, I would have had to be expecting a root canal.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is nothing but another large handful of dirt thrown upon the long ago fully nailed coffin that holds Steven Spielberg’s once vast talents.

People that liked this movie have said that it was “dumb fun.” Dumb, yes. Fun, no. Dumb fun would have been great. I understand that the filmmakers were going for a tongue-in-cheek, silly, fun action movie. But I didn't have much fun, other than the occasional snarky comment I tossed to my cohort in cinemisery who went to see this piece of crap with me, and making little games out of the viewing (I was off by 5 minutes on the snake scene, having called that it would appear at 1:15. It actually arrived at 1:10.). Even the silly homages to other films (ie. Caddyshack, The Wild One), which I usually enjoy in a movie, were much too overt, preposterous and annoying. I really couldn't wait for the movie to end. If it had been in a multiplex, I might have walked out and seen something else.

I felt like nobody that was involved with this movie was trying to make it any good, except maybe Cate Blanchett, who was stunning as usual. The script made no sense, the acting was half-hearted or maybe even quarter-hearted (Harrison Ford just threw away line after line, not that the lines were very punchy anyway), and the action was never resolved with any kind of cleverness. For example, the characters go over a waterfall, everybody's ok, they go over another waterfall, everybody's ok, they go over a REALLY BIG waterfall, and everybody's ok. I'm supposed to be entertained by that? I haven’t seen a hundred characters in a hundred other movies go over a hundred other waterfalls? How boring is this? It was like watching a learning-disabled family ride the flume at an amusement park. Can the characters' survival at least be made interesting? Can they escape their peril in a slightly more interesting way than “they just survive?”

The acting was surprisingly horrid. I at least expected Harrison Ford to be slightly amusing or charmingly cocky or something. But I didn’t for a moment believe that it was Indiana Jones I was watching on the screen. Ford seemed like he was reading his lines off of cue cards, and furthermore, he appeared to be reading them for the first time. His inflection was flat and uninspired. I got the feeling that he was embarrassed to be playing this character at this point in his life. Also his pants looked really new, like he just bought them at The Gap. Indiana Jones shouldn't be wearing brand new pants.

This is very important.I also found Shia La Poof to be very irritating, but then again I always find him to be very irritating. He has this confused sort of arrogance, and this arrogance seems unjustified to me. Unlike other stars of the big screen, whose arrogance may be dignified or charming or comical, La Poof is just snotty. He’s like a little green snot and when I watch him in a movie I feel like he’s getting smeared all over my glasses. And why would anybody cast someone with an afro as a greaser? His frizzed-up hair refused to stay put, and didn’t work as the slicked back “duck’s ass” hairstyle so popular with the toughs of the late fifties. He looked like a sort of olive-skinned, fuzzy-headed semitic Elvis impersonator straight out of some white supremacist’s rock and roll nightmare.

Another thing I don't understand... was Marion Ravenwood supposed to be demented or has Karen Allen lost her mind in real life or what? What was with that looney smile glued to her wide mug the whole time? She just seemed like some chubby wacko running around. I couldn’t believe for a single second that this bloated nutcase was a woman that the great Indiana Jones would have any interest in whatsoever.

While watching this clunker, I had this image of Spielberg, Ford and Lucas all sitting around drunk at a fancy dinner, saying things like, "Um, let's see... how about ants? We haven't done ants yet. What the hell. Throw some ants in there. And have we done waterfalls yet? Maybe. But put that in there too anyway. Who really cares at this point? The suckers will see this thing no matter what. Ha ha ha ha ha." Actually, the murderous ants were probably my favorite part of the movie. But that's not saying much.

I read an interview with Spielberg where he said that he felt like he was on vacation while he was making this movie. Makes sense to me. I felt like he was on vacation too.