Like all 'Indy' movies this one starts with and centers around bad stereotyping. I don't know if there's ever good stereotyping but this movie gets it wrong on all levels. I understand they're dumbing down the movie for the masses, but in what world does a bad accent automatically make you a bad guy? An example: Indy has a standard American accent so he's the good guy. The Russian woman with a bad accent, well she's hell bent on controlling the world. Any time you're confused (you wouldn't be, but the average Indy fan would be) you just have to listen or figure out the characters nationality and you'll know if they are good (from America) or bad (from some other country).
I'm not the only one whose not buying Shia Labeouf's mediocre tough guy impersonation. He's trying hard to recreate Brando in 'The Wild One'. He's got the goofy hat, the motorcycle and the cloths, but that's where the comparison ends. Shia knows he can't pull off the full out tough guy, and that's fine, it's good that he knows his limits. And he tries to layer his performance to make it seem like the tough guy routine is just a routine and that's he's really a weak guy underneath. That might have worked if Spielberg didn't continually put Shia's character in ridiculous situations. For example: It's a good thing Shia is such a tough guy and knows how to sword fight, because otherwise the 5 minute sword fight scene he has with the evil foreigner on moving jeeps through the jungle would have been anticlimactic. Not that the sword fight accomplished anything other than adding some “action” to the movie, because the Russian villain still gets to the treasure first. Shia's performance is bad, but it's not as much his fault as it is bad casting.
Who doesn't love one dimensional characters (Everyone reading this should be raising your hand)? Nobody employs the use of one dimensional characters as obviously as Spielberg does. Every time a character is introduced (other than Indy) it becomes quite evident why they are there and what they are there for. The Indy story can't get bogged down with living breathing characters. That might take attention from the action and from Indy. Instead every character is there for one reason only, whether that's to move the story along in one point, to help Indy get past a particular obstacle or to add a (weak) sense of dramatic tension or comedic relief.
The Indy films have never been known for their realism. That's fine, I'm willing to suspend a certain level of disbelief when I watch a movie, especially an action movie. But in what world does surviving an atomic explosion by hiding in a refrigerator make sense? Indy does that within the first 20 minutes of the film. Let me set the scene for you. Against all odds Indy dramatically escapes from the Russian's and finds himself on an atomic test site complete with houses and crash test dummies. He hears sirens go off and a warning that an explosion is about to take place. Now, I'm no expert in atomic bomb testing, but I would think a warning 15 to 20 seconds before a bomb is about to be dropped on you is not enough time to get out of the blast radius (making the warning not only pointless, but absurd). Anyway, Indy thinks quick on his feet and runs into a test house set to be blown up. He quickly clears out a refrigerator and climbs inside. The explosion shoots the refrigerator outside the blast radius and Indy climbs out and watches the mushroom cloud with amazement. It's a good thing Indy expertly picked the one piece of protection that was shot outside the blast radius, and also the one thing that wasn't completely vaporized by the explosion. I didn't notice any other refrigerators being launched out, or anything significant left standing. I figured this was an audience check. If you make it 20 minutes in and see Indy survive an atomic explosion in a refrigerator, you're willing to accept everything that comes next.
The plot of the movie centers around a magical mysterious crystal skull that telepathically communicates with people. The skull tells Indy to return it to its resting place. So we follow Indy and his wacky gang of sidekicks around (can you believe he had a kid he didn't know about from a woman he almost married a long time ago, but has until now been relatively unheard of? How original.) as Indy must overcome the locals and the Russians in an attempt to return the skull.
It turns out that the skull is actually the head of an inter dimensional being, or actually part of a group of inter dimensional beings. But when one of the inter dimensional beings loses its head the entire group of inter dimensional beings freezes. And this group has been frozen for thousands of years because one of them carelessly lost it's head (the crystal skull Indy has). Now if you were a inter dimensional being, capable of cross dimensional travel in a futuristic spaceship, wouldn't you put plans in place to prevent you loosing your crystal head? Not that loosing your head would kill you, it just strands you and all your buddies on the planet until someone comes and places it back on your body. I guess loosing your crystal head is par for the course when you're a member of a group of naked inter dimensional beings sent on an anthropological mission to study planet earth.
The movie ends when Indy's rival, the evil Russian woman, places the skull onto the alien body. The group of aliens come to life and thank the Russian woman for returning the skull and saving them. Out of gratitude they grant her one wish (who knew crystal inter dimensional aliens were also genies?), which she uses to ask for all the knowledge in the world, she wants to know everything. The main alien begins to shoot a stream of information into the womans head, eventually making her head blow up. Presumably her greed and thirst for knowledge killed her. So much for gratitude on the part of the aliens as well as the consistency of the movie's morality. Throughout the entire movie Indy is searching for knowledge which is also what the aliens were sent to earth to do, and Indy tries to get his son (Shia's character) to value the importance of learning. But in the end, the evil woman had a bad accent and underestimated the brain's capacity to store information and thus was fated to blow up. The inter dimensional beings then climbed into their space ship with all their archaeological treasures and flew off into outer space before they finally shot off into another dimension. Indy ends the day with the greatest treasure of all, a family.
Rating:
6.5/10 Bads
I found myself laughing at it and not with it, but it's not bad enough to be worth watching again.
(10 being the worst movie possible, 1 being only slightly below average. In general, the higher the score, the higher the likely hood of unintentional humor.)
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