Sunday Movie Experience

This being the first time there's a SMEx evening while I'm in Oslo, I was happy to join that big group of 14 who went to see the new Indiana Jones. I was promptly given the job to write the review, so here it is.

We follow Indy as he suddenly finds himself yanked into the middle of a Soviet secret mission, which revolves around the secrets of the eponymous Crystal Skull. It leads him (and not only him ) to Peru to eventually discover it.

Having been at the catch up event the day before was very conducive, if not essential, for me to enjoy the film, as it remains very true to the spirit of its predecessors and often requires a good recollection of them to succeed - it's got the classic classroom scene, the comic action scenes, disgusting crawling things , Indy shattering/ripping apart/in other ways destroying countless irreplacable artifacts, and generally lots of back-references. What it luckily doesn't have is annoying/screaming chicks/children (Temple of Doom anyone? Bleh).

The special effects are naturally more sophisticated, but the film luckily doesn't rely on them more than the previous ones to work. Of course the plot has the usual dose of supernatural forces - which brings me to my main gripe about the film: As the film closes in on the final showdown, what was probably meant as a tongue-in-cheek reuse of an old and tried theme increasingly comes across as too cheesy and very worn-out, and generally not creative enough for what we've come to expect from Indiana Jones. The showdown itself was a huge letdown for me, it really made me cringe. Many of the action scenes actually did - they are supposed to be over-the-top and slightly impossible (complete with thousands of bullets fired at close range and... missing), that's Indy for you, but the film makers really went overboard with some of them. I can only muster up so much suspension of disbelief before it becomes annoying and you begin to be insulted for being expected to believe anyone could actually survive *that*.

All in all, while you won't walk out of the cinema with that "now that was interesting!"-feeling which Last Crusade gave me (IMO still by far the best one of the series), it's certainly a flick you can enjoy if you liked its predecessors.

Hoff says: I won't have that many grey hairs when I'm 65!