Save Yourself...
...money and 2 hours of your life; do not go and see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. If you love everything (ok, maybe not Temple of Doom) that makes up the original trilogy of this storied serial adventure, you will only find disappointment in what is currently raking in a ton of cash on memories and marketing. It's almost as if Speilberg saw what Lucas had done to Star Wars and wanted in on the game. Speaking of the other ruined saga, Indy actually says, "I have a bad feeling about this" in the new movie...hello? wrong franchise! It's almost as if the Writer's Strike happened and George Lucas said, "No problem, I'll just write some of the dialog!" The thing that irritates me the most with this movie is that Speilberg flat out lied in all of the press I had seen -- he specifically said that they relied on old fashioned stuntwork and special effects to avoid the CGI look and stay true to the original trilogy. As far as I could tell, there is a scene involving monkeys that made me wonder if I was watching a re-release of Jumanji. The computer effects in this movie are saturated throughout. Also, Speilberg said that his current cinematographer went back and studied the other films so they could match the style and feel; and yet, the style and feel was more akin to War of the Worlds. Ok, sure, there are moments in the original films that are pretty preposterous, but this one has a few that take the cake. I don't want to post any spoilers, so I won't get into specifics. All I know is that I had the same feeling in my stomach after I saw Jurassic Park III. They had suckered me in on that one too -- "Sam Neil is back, so it will be more like the first one"; however, my sister and I had to gorge ourselves on desserts at TGI Friday's afterwards just for the endorphins. They suckered me on thsi one too -- Indy is back, though some years have passed. I mean, Harrison Ford even wears old man pants hiked up to his chin in this one. The only redeeming scene in this movie for me was Shia LaBeouf's entrance straight out of The Wild One. Maybe if they had bit the bullet and just used real film in the camera for realism, and it wasn't so digitally clean looking overall, it might have fit in with the other films in look alone. I don't know, I'm just really glad I used free movie passes to see it. That's all I'm saying.