Indy Doesn't Quite Do It

He's rescued the Ark of the Covenant, defeated an evil Thugee cult, quested for the Holy Grail, and spent a couple of years in obscure, historical television adventures. Today we went to the theater to see Indiana Jones' latest adventure, and I was really, really hoping for a terrific, "hold on to the seat of your pants" reunion.

I should have known better when the words "Written by George Lucas" flashed across the screen at the beginning of the film. Lucas once offered us a terrific trilogy of films, and he has shown himself limitless when it comes to creative characters, locations, and various cinematic tidbits. But his more recent films failed to pull all those creative elements into a great storyline. Instead, the creativity gets buried beneath painfully bad dialogue and cumbersome plot elements.

Thus, even though the latest Indiana Jones film features some terrific nostalgic cinematography from Spielburg, even though Ford turns in another charming performance as the legendary pulp hero, even though Marion is back (yay!), even though there's an exotic, obssessive villain, even though they've got the typical scenes with creepy crawlies and exotic locations and more than a few mummified bodies lurking about the sets, the movie left me feeling very disapapointed.

I don't want to spoil anything about the story, but the "big mystery" that is solved just doesn't fit with the legend of Indy. Part of the problem may be the move from the pulp era heroics with Nazi villains into the space-race tensions of a looming cold war with the Communists. Certainly the current plot line would fit with the heroic adventure stories of the late 50s. But for Indy, something just doesn't fit.

Too much of the film is spent in laborious dialogue setting up the plot. The introduction of Mutt (who is played very well by Shia LaBeouf) wasn't really necessary. The characters of "Mac" McHale and Professor "Ox" Oxley don't really add enough to make their presence worthy. Poor Cate Blanchett does her best to make the villainess interesting despite some really clumsy dialogue and characterization. And the special effects-filled finale actually made some of us in the theater laugh at its over-the-top silliness (and not in a good way).

Too bad, really. So much of what was needed to make a great Indy film was there, but the final result gets a solid grade of C from me.

Oh well, at least the latest Narnia film is terrific. (We saw it on the ship -- a nice perk to see a Disney blockbuster release while on a Disney cruise.) I'll try and post my thoughts about that one later this week.