About 20 minutes into 'Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,' there is a humdinger of a chase that glides and slides through the streets and corridors around the campus where the legendary Dr. Jones (Harrison Ford) is a Professor. I'm not sure exactly how the conclusion of the chase affected the plot, but I do remember that it ended with a punchline - and nobody in the theater laughed. It's sad to say, but a heck of a lot of this new adventure plays like a parody of the (much better) films that have gone before.
I'd like to think I gave the film a fair shot. As with the previous Indiana Jones adventures, we open on something natural that resembles the Paramount logo, followed by the credits in the elegant typeface that has graced each film (save 'Temple of Doom'). A simple, fun sequence orients us that this story takes place in 1957, and we end on a military base hidden in the middle of the desert. So far, so good. It's even exciting to get our first glimpse of Indy's fedora, coming to rest on its familar head in sillhouette. But then people start speaking, and it's all downhill from there.
Harrison Ford seems more than happy to be here, but I really question whether his choice was more dependent on the payday rather than any allegiance to the beloved character he personifies. There is the occasional spark of the Indy we love, but too much of this performance feels unfamiliar, contradictory and (dare I say it) lazy. There is a plot here, too, but I'll be damned if I couldn't make heads or tails of it. But see, it doesn't matter because (SPOILER ALERT) there's a nuclear blast, a chase through the forest that includes a travelling swordfight, a boat that plummets down three waterfalls, giant ants, and ultimately, an alien ship. Excuse me, an "interdimensional being" ship. I hope H.R. Geiger got some royalties on these updated Crystal Skulls - that should tell you a lot. Forgive me for laying it all out, but I don't have much allegiance to protecting a story that so assaulted my intelligence. It truly does play like a Sci-Fi Channel original movie but with Indiana Jones instead of some twenty-something hack.
Along the way, we are reintroduced to Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), Indy's love interest from the 'Lost Ark' adventure. Evidently, Marion was always the love of his life, and with a tossed-off line worthy of a Lifetime movie, those years spent split apart are forgiven and they get all pie-eyed over each other. They are brought together again by Marion's son (Shia LaBeouf), who enters the story trying to locate a missing colleague (John Hurt). All these characters are underwritten and underplayed, and their interactions don't amount to a hill of ants in the plot. Even the requisite baddie, a Russian agent played by Cate Blanchett, is severely underutilized. I was bored and distracted, and I lost track of who these people were and what they were trying to accomplish.
My theory on what went wrong here is that Spielberg and Lucas have unwittingly given in to their worst instincts. A large chunk at the front of this film plays an awful lot like Spielberg's misbegotten attempt at comedy, '1941,' even coming awfully close to copying a couple of the overblown setpieces in that film. The tail end, sad to say, has all the coherency and sense of 'Howard the Duck.' Maybe the idea was to run with the times, and instead of making a WWII-era serial pastiche, they wanted to make a pastiche of nuclear-age B-movies. Either way, the choices are so ridiculous because they don't respect the integrity of the Indiana Jones character.
When they first announced Ford would be coming back as Indiana Jones, many wondered if they would address how Indy has aged. The resulting film proves that the age isn't really that big a deal. The real missed opportunity here is that Jones is a man out of his own time. He's still an archeologist and a professor, but the word around him is different. There's a bit of humor up front that plays on this idea, but the idea never resurfaces, left in the dust of some broad and ridiculous setpieces with hollow ciphers in place of characters.