Reviews

I hardly know where to start with what bothers me about this TV movie.

Perhaps the fact that woman who has just lost her baby under extreme circumstances go to work the next day, looking like a million dollars. Walks about with perfect hair and make-up, not in mourning in any way.

Maybe it is the fact that NO-ONE believes her story although 1) she can prove she had a fake nurse coming to see her at the time of the birth 2) she had drugs in her system 3) she can identify the nurse and does so in front of a police officer.

Maybe it is the fact that everyone is so dumb and everything is spelled out and over explained as in "I had a strange woman visit me right before I passed out and gave birth - there must be a connection - what if she had something to do with this?" or "She gave me some vitamins and now they're gone - what if she used those to drug me?" NO S*** SHERLOCK!

Maybe it is the brain dead dialogue: "I am sure we will get through this" - "Oh, did you take a course on how to say all the right things?" - and it was NOT ironic! I could go on. Anyways - if you want to waste 1½ hours on crappy, naive and kliché dialogue, and unbelievable story line, Hollywood styling, and bad acting, you are in for treat.

The problem with 'Kingdom of the Crystal Skull' is that it totally abandons the heritage, formula and sense of impending doom that made the original films so special.

The script is absolutely awful hamming up Indiana Jones to an imaginary new audience of unintelligent kids. I expected more from Lucas and believed the movie would have been a way to make up for the mass disappointment he caused with the recent Star Wars films.

Lines are all spoken one after the other spelling out the plot and reminding you of what is happening, as would happen in a pantomime or school play.

The worst thing about the movie as with other big movies in Hollywood is the propensity to overuse CGI. The other films were 95% live action with great stunts. For example in 'Last Crusade' you have a 'real' train fight, tunnel of rats on fire, speedboat chase, castle escape, bikechase, tankfight, tasks. This is non stop vintage and believable action that keeps you on the edge of your seat as you genuinely believe Indy is a mortal character that could bite the bullet at any point.

If they were to remake 'Raiders', rest assured that those snakes would be fake CGI snakes, and all those extras digging at Tannis would be result of a digital copy/paste job, turning 12 real people into 150 extras.

'Crystal Skull' feels like a poor mans Van Helsing/ The Mummy/ by trying to imitate visual effects that have been used almost ten years before in other movies.

Crystal Skull' chops and changes too quickly without giving time for the characters to develop. They literally walk into a tomb, find what they are looking for, and walk out again. In the others the treasure was always boobytrapped.

The saddest thing about this film is that it will still turnover a massive amount of revenue purely on the strength of the legendary status given to the movie by legions of movie fans who helped to build the franchise now in their 20's, 30's and 40's with kids. It however betrays this audience in favor of appealing to young unintelligent children that in reality simply don't care about Indiana Jones when they have already seen similar CGI heavy movies with poor scripts as in The Mummy, Van Helsing, Pirates of the Caribean etc.

Its so upsetting because Hollywood is falling into the trap of the quick buck. But in 20 years time you will NOT be looking back at this with the great fondness you did with the others.