If you have nothing better to do, this might be good for a matinée. I would certainly not pay full price to see this. Whatever you do, don't have high expectations. There will be a lot of one-liner jokes that are kind of funny to kids or teenagers.
It's a struggle to think of something good or exceptional about the film. The sets were the most interesting part. There's a temple with an interesting opening mechanism, a creepy sanitarium, a model 1950s town complete with mannequins watching TV and a nuclear blast that's rather dynamic, but some parts just reminded me of Happy Days (complete with the Malt shop). Unfortunately Shia isn't The Fonz even in an ironic sense. He has a compulsion to comb his greasy hair throughout the film.
The saddest part is that the actors seem to be doing their best with a script that's more like a commercial for Scientology, than a true action thriller. There's a strong history that's laid out in the film about aliens interacting with humans and creating paranormal ability. There are all these, "I'm going to use my psychic powers on you" scenes.
The continuity in the film is extremely flawed. Some of the characters' motivations are just stupid. I'm not going to list any spoilers, but several come to mind that just make me cringe. It was extremely disruptive to watch the film and see something that makes you go, "Wait a minute. That character wouldn't do something THAT stupid." Just be prepared, scenes like that are forced in there to move the story along.
The effects were very disappointing too. There's an insect infestation that's a tiny step above Recon 2020. The animals just a have an unreal look to them (gophers with "Uh oh" expressions and the like). If you like that kind of thing you might enjoy it, but it just seemed childish in this film. Not a good use of computer graphics at all.
I'm not sure if the actors did their best with what they were given or if some of them have just lost their touch. If you don't like Shia, this film isn't going to change your opinion about him. I could tell he was excited to have a role in the film to the point of overacting (you could see that "wow, I'm in this Indy film" in his eyes), but he just didn't have the physicality needed for this role (too short, just a not leading-man look to his face). I had to control myself from laughing at Cate's accent. She attempted to sound Russian, but sounds more like Natasha of Rocky and Bullwinkle. Her English accent slips out too. Harrison Ford is good as usual, but he seemed a little tired. He didn't have the spirit of someone like Bruce Willis in the last Die Hard movie (I enjoyed Live Free or Die Hard more than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull btw).
My friends were shaking their heads throughout the film in disbelief over how poorly Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was executed. One of my friend's was all exciting before the film, talking about renting the entire trilogy for us to watch. After the film all he could say was, "this is ruined for me." As for me, I watched the first Indiana Jones in the theater when it first came out. It was fun. The second I saw on DVD. It didn't have the spark of the first, but was watchable as a light action movie. I didn't feel compelled to see the third. I felt like I came into Kingdom of the Crystal Skull from an extremely neutral place (not a mega fan, but not completely unfamiliar with Indiana's roots). I read some of the reviews and set my expectations pretty low. Unfortunately, the film was worse than my hopes.
My friends who loved the first 3 Indiana Jones movies felt like Lucas just spent 2 hours kicking them in the crotch when we watched Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Also, two scenes were recycled directly out of Spielberg's Young Sherlock Holmes.
In it's defense, the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull wasn't as disappointing as Spiderman 3, but it does suffer from the bad-sequel syndrome. It's more on par with Phantom Menace without as good special effects. There were a lot of similarities to National Treasure 2 (let's find the City of Gold before the bad guys and have a family reunion in the process).
There were applause after the film from a bunch of kids that were there for a birthday party (about 30 boys around 11 years old). I did have to ask a mother to have her kid put away the cellphone in the middle (he was so bored, he was playing flashing games on it).
I just hope there won't be anymore Indiana Jones or Mutt Jones films. It's time for Hollywood to come up with new characters and new stories.
It's a struggle to think of something good or exceptional about the film. The sets were the most interesting part. There's a temple with an interesting opening mechanism, a creepy sanitarium, a model 1950s town complete with mannequins watching TV and a nuclear blast that's rather dynamic, but some parts just reminded me of Happy Days (complete with the Malt shop). Unfortunately Shia isn't The Fonz even in an ironic sense. He has a compulsion to comb his greasy hair throughout the film.
The saddest part is that the actors seem to be doing their best with a script that's more like a commercial for Scientology, than a true action thriller. There's a strong history that's laid out in the film about aliens interacting with humans and creating paranormal ability. There are all these, "I'm going to use my psychic powers on you" scenes.
The continuity in the film is extremely flawed. Some of the characters' motivations are just stupid. I'm not going to list any spoilers, but several come to mind that just make me cringe. It was extremely disruptive to watch the film and see something that makes you go, "Wait a minute. That character wouldn't do something THAT stupid." Just be prepared, scenes like that are forced in there to move the story along.
The effects were very disappointing too. There's an insect infestation that's a tiny step above Recon 2020. The animals just a have an unreal look to them (gophers with "Uh oh" expressions and the like). If you like that kind of thing you might enjoy it, but it just seemed childish in this film. Not a good use of computer graphics at all.
I'm not sure if the actors did their best with what they were given or if some of them have just lost their touch. If you don't like Shia, this film isn't going to change your opinion about him. I could tell he was excited to have a role in the film to the point of overacting (you could see that "wow, I'm in this Indy film" in his eyes), but he just didn't have the physicality needed for this role (too short, just a not leading-man look to his face). I had to control myself from laughing at Cate's accent. She attempted to sound Russian, but sounds more like Natasha of Rocky and Bullwinkle. Her English accent slips out too. Harrison Ford is good as usual, but he seemed a little tired. He didn't have the spirit of someone like Bruce Willis in the last Die Hard movie (I enjoyed Live Free or Die Hard more than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull btw).
My friends were shaking their heads throughout the film in disbelief over how poorly Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was executed. One of my friend's was all exciting before the film, talking about renting the entire trilogy for us to watch. After the film all he could say was, "this is ruined for me." As for me, I watched the first Indiana Jones in the theater when it first came out. It was fun. The second I saw on DVD. It didn't have the spark of the first, but was watchable as a light action movie. I didn't feel compelled to see the third. I felt like I came into Kingdom of the Crystal Skull from an extremely neutral place (not a mega fan, but not completely unfamiliar with Indiana's roots). I read some of the reviews and set my expectations pretty low. Unfortunately, the film was worse than my hopes.
My friends who loved the first 3 Indiana Jones movies felt like Lucas just spent 2 hours kicking them in the crotch when we watched Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Also, two scenes were recycled directly out of Spielberg's Young Sherlock Holmes.
In it's defense, the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull wasn't as disappointing as Spiderman 3, but it does suffer from the bad-sequel syndrome. It's more on par with Phantom Menace without as good special effects. There were a lot of similarities to National Treasure 2 (let's find the City of Gold before the bad guys and have a family reunion in the process).
There were applause after the film from a bunch of kids that were there for a birthday party (about 30 boys around 11 years old). I did have to ask a mother to have her kid put away the cellphone in the middle (he was so bored, he was playing flashing games on it).
I just hope there won't be anymore Indiana Jones or Mutt Jones films. It's time for Hollywood to come up with new characters and new stories.