Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

If you're a fan of Indiana Jones, there's probably no way I can keep you from seeing this movie. But for your own sake, I'm going to try. It's too late for me. Some things can't be unseen, no matter how much gasoline I pour in my eyes.

This movie would only be a little lousy if it wasn't the last dying breath of such a great franchise, and if so many creative minds hadn't gone sour in making it. But with Harrison Ford, George Lucas, and Steven Spielberg working together, well, you just expected more. I guess when you're that high, you have farther to fall.

Whether it was a good idea to show an aging hero is neither here nor there. Probably not the greatest idea, but it isn't what killed this movie. What truly did it in was that it was just plain stupid.

The traditional Nazi bad guys put on different uniforms and became commie bad guys. The villains were two dimensional, and the plot twists were duds. But still I wanted to believe; wanted to enjoy the movie.

Then came Indiana surviving a nuclear blast inside a refrigerator. WTF? Sure, in the past he'd had some pretty amazing escapes, but they were comic book saves; believable even though we were pretty sure it wouldn't have worked out that way for real. But we were able to smile and accept it. But when you're forced to accept something that insults your intelligence on so many levels (like, even if the radiation of the blast was blocked by the lead fridge, wouldn't Indie have been mushed by the icebox being blown out of the house, through the sky, out of the radiation range, and into the ground?), it pulls you right out of the suspension of disbelief, and makes you painfully aware someone didn't do their job. You Are Not Amused.

This could have been so much more than it was. Then again, it could have been so much less, as well.

2 out of 5 stars

Plot Summary:
Nearly 20 years after last donning his famous fedora to save the world from imminent peril, Hollywood icon Harrison Ford returns to one of his best-known roles -- that of snake-wary archaeologist Indiana Jones. This long-awaited fourth installment in the legendary adventure saga also stars Shia LaBeouf as Jones's headstrong young sidekick and Cate Blanchett as a treacherous Russian agent who is hell-bent on protecting mysterious artifacts.