Tuesday, May 27, 2008

After reading a particularly vicious review, I saw the new Indiana Jones movie half-expecting to be disappointed. To my surprise, I thought it was fresh, exuberant and fully in touch with charm of the earlier films. As far as I'm concerned, endlessly debating the merits of "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" relative to its predecessors misses the point of the series; the Indiana Jones movies have always been homages to pulp adventure fiction, and the new installment advances the action admirably without sacrificing attention to the characters.

This film could easily have been a hokey embarrassment. To George Lucas' and Steven Spielberg's credit, it's anything but.
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8 comments:

Katie said...

Considering that reviewer actually seemed *like* the inferior "Temple of Doom", that would have discounted his opinion of the new movie in my mind completely.

8:36 AM
Paul Kimball said...

Mac,
The truth is that most reviewers don't really like films. Roger Ebert is an exception, which is why he is one of the few critics I'll bother to read and consider. Note that he gave the new Indy an enthusiastic thumbs up!
Paul

10:20 AM
Mac said...

Katie--

I think the reviewer was out to get the movie from the beginning. The Pitch has generally good writers, but they aren't necessarily smart writers.

Paul--

I love Ebert's reviews and was relieved to read his positive review, which I thought was dead-on.

Indy lives!

11:06 AM
Anonymous said...

As a rule, film critics are shmucks anyway IMHO.

You can usually count on a movie being good from a public perspective if a critic bad-mouths it, even from Ebert occasionally.

But what do I know, I paid five bucks 29 years ago when the first Star Trek movie came out. I actually thought it was good.

11:41 AM
Anonymous said...

That reviewer was way over-harsh. Indy definitely lives.

Though the scene of Mutt swinging on vines like Mowgli from The Jungle Book was one of the silliest darn things I've seen, ever.

9:53 PM
Mac said...

Anna-

Agreed. I was fully willing to suspend disbelief, but that scene was a bit too much to handle.

10:09 PM
Greg Bishop said...

Jeez, that reviewer is an asshole. I seems like he's a frustrated filmmaker, like a lot of film critics.

I liked the movie. I went into it without any idea if I would like it or not. Sure, there's a lot of corny lines and shaky effects (especially in the forest chase) but the spirit of the original was definitely there.

3:21 AM
buy kamagra said...

I don't know you expected this movie being bad, because this movie is too perfect and the plot is good enough actually I'd like to watch it again.

3:54 PM

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