As an administrative employee at a local university, I am consistently baffled at the idea of a sabbatical; do you mean to tell me that I can promise to do research for a few months and get a whole semester away from the office? Who are these softee professors who can’t stand a full year’s worth of teaching and research? Surely, they could take some lessons from Prof. Henry Jones, Jr., who fought off Nazis and recovered more than his fair share of fabulous artifacts while teaching a full course load. The adventurous academic returns after 19 years in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and while Hitler, Marcus Brody and Henry Sr. are long dead, the fedora, bullwhip and sense of fun remain in tact. If only the last half hour of the movie wasn’t so far-fetched.
Warning: Spoilers ahead.
It’s been years since Indy’s last on-screen adventure, and it shows on Harrison Ford’s face when we first see him dragged before a Communist firing squad, forced to lead a Soviet soldier (Cate Blanchett) through a government warehouse in search of a magnetic crystal skull that will allegedly give its holder a profound psychic power that the Reds can use to socialize the world. But Indy hasn’t lost a step in his old age, and he quickly escapes and sets on a course to find the skull and return it to its original location in the Amazon. Through atomic bomb tests, rebellious ant armies, thick jungles and the added weight of an apprentice archeologist (Shia LaBeouf) whose mother got caught up in another professor’s attempt to return the skull, Indy takes us on one of his trademark adventures.
There’s a lot to like about the movie. Indy’s older eyes provide a unique perspective on the events. Even in an age of growing technology, there’s room for an old-fashioned hero, but it’s not easy for him. There are bumps along the way that he could have gotten himself out of in earlier days, and while some of his shortcomings are played for good comic effect, his struggles make his successes that much more rewarding. The Indiana Jones movies, above all else, were fun, and Crystal Skull follows form in more than two-thirds of its time on screen.
The problem arrives in the climax of the movie, when (this is the spoiler part…I warned you) the crystal skull becomes a connection between our dimension and that of an alien race. After providing a historical context for the strange shape of the skull (which a far less photogenic central artifact than the Holy Grail or Ark of the Covenant), George Lucas and Steven Spielberg pull one of filmmaking history’s worst bait and switch. It’s not that aliens aren’t good movie fodder; they are, but the Jones sagas have a certain air of historical believability to them, and putting interdimensional beings into the end of a pretty decent adventure film betrays the trust you put into Indy.
I’m by no means a purist. If you want to talk to those people, go to Aint It Cool News or wait for my friend Pat to comment on this. But even I was taken out of the film as soon as that alien started mugging for the camera. Early in the movie, Indy cuts open the wrapping of a mummified corpse and the air causes the cadaver to crumble. Maybe Lucas and Spielberg should have left Indy in the wrappings after all these years, because while it’s cool to see the character rolled out one more time, extended exposure to a smart audience leaves the film a disappointing pile of dust.
Rating: * * of 5