Indiana Jones IV - THE REVIEW
Man, it was a LOOOOONG wait for this movie. But it was WELL worth the wait!! I surely was giddy as a schoolboy. Excellent movie and well deserving of the series, in general! Go see it!Without giving away any of the movies "secrets", I will say the plot was not bad...not overly complicated but certainly not dumbed down either. It was a straight up Indiana Jones movie that, honestly, had a pretty great mixture of elements from all of the previous IJ movies rolled into one. The one thing I was skeptical about was how will the cold war era bad guys work in an IJ world. No Nazis?? But have no fear, it worked out MUCH better than I anticipated. Plenty of worthy villains in this one!
Let me say that Harrison Ford did an OUTSTANDING job at age 65 playing a part that's built for a man half his age. He did tons of stunts and fight scenes that you would expect from an IJ movie. He definitely pulled it off without a hitch. And once you get past the "he looks much softer than he did in the last movie", please understand that the last movie was filmed 20 years ago, you can enjoy the movie for what it is.
One of the best things I can say about the movie is the on-screen relationship between Shia Lebeouf (Mutt) and Harrison Ford (Indy). They had an obvious chemistry and the duo worked GREAT together. I can't say enough about young Shia Lebeouf, he's a fantastic actor with a bright career ahead of him. Doing an equally as brilliant of a job in IJ4 is Cate Blanchett who plays the villain (Spalko) in the movie. She does an impeccable job at being the sinister adversary and probably the most memorable job of any of the villains save for Ronald Lacey who plays the creepy Nazi in Raiders. Nevertheless, Blanchette was great in it.
There are tons of surprises for the IJ fan throughout the movie and even some easter eggs if you're really paying attention that I enjoyed immensely. All in all, it was a great adventure and one I will most definitely be seeing again at the movies as well as owning on DVD. Please go see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, it's a refreshing throwback to when movies were thrilling, over-the-top and thoroughly entertaining.
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posted by fuel52 at 9:21 AM
4 Comments:
Having grown up on a steady diet of the Indiana Jones trilogy, I was wholeheartedly disappointed with the silly plot of the latest installment. Aliens? Come on! In the last 20 minutes, my wife leaned over and said, "If there is a spaceship, I am going to leave." Without hesitation, I asked, "Will you need help with your coat?" since I was certain what was coming. We slogged through it, though, with gritted teeth. What a stinker. As we left the theatres with our friends, we were tossing around alternate titles such as "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Crap" and "Raiders of the Last Buck."
I disagree. I thought it was well done.
Well, I went and saw IJ and the Kingdom last night. And Lee, it wasn't a spaceship. It was a space-between-the-spaces ship. Anyway, in my opinion, because of the plot, you can't compare this latest installment of IJ to Raiders or the Last Crusade. You can only compare this to the Temple of Doom.
I think they got away from what made Raiders so great when they made Temple of Doom and they got most of it back when they made The Last Crusade. Now they got away from it again. Part of what made Raiders and the Last Crusade great movies was the fact that Indie was in search of a "real" artifact with Judeo-Christian origins. Sorry, but Sankara Stones and Crystal Alien Skulls just seem a bit intangible for me. They certainly did better with the villains in the Kingdom than in Doom. Although, personally I would have liked to see some surviving underground Nazi's be the villain again, but Commies will do. The Kingdom also did much better in getting Shia Lebeouf as a side kick. Sorry Short Fuzz or whatever your name was (That's what I said... Booty Trap). But I thought Karen Allen's parts were way too campy; not at all like her performance in Raiders. She should have been dead and have Indie and Mutt find out their “secret” some other way. But, all in all, it was an Indie film (of course, because I read his response before I went and saw the movie, Lee cushioned the blow). I say, if you liked Temple of Doom, you’ll enjoy this one. But if you didn’t care for Doom, you most probably won’t enjoy this one either.
I'll post the full review on my own blog, but I'll say that it was better than Temple of Doom, for sure.
This movie was good. Perhaps oribac is right, the reason it was good, was because I knew not to expect "we named the dog Indiana" and the like. I knew there would be no Henry Jones Sr., or Marcus Brody or Sallah, or Nazis...and I knew there'd be aliens.
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