Column: Newest ‘Indy’

By Patrick Daugherty
June 4, 2008

First, The Maneater is well aware this review is coming out nearly two weeks since Indy and Co. whipped back into theaters. So we know you’ve probably already seen it or your friends have told you it sucks. I’ll get back to that in a minute.

Second, there are aliens — lots of them. Maybe Will Smith should have gotten Shia LaBeouf’s part.

Regardless, because Indy is now too old to be fighting Nazis, we are given Cold War-era super Soviets as the enemy du jour along with a healthy dose of “are they or aren’t they evil” aliens.

But your smart-ass friends have probably already told you all about the aliens. They’ve also probably already told you that Harrison Ford looks like he’s aged much more than the 16 elapsed movie years since the events of “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” And that Shia LaBeouf is underwhelming as the movie’s Indy-in-waiting.

Hopefully they didn’t forget to tell you the movie’s obligatory whip-smart love interest, Karen Allen. Reprising her role as Marion Ravenwood from “Raiders,” she looks as if both the top and bottom of her head have been smashed by anvils. Age has not been kind to her.

Is everything they’ve told you true? Most definitely.

In lesser hands, all these factors could have come together to sink this risky, 19-years-in-the-making sequel. But because the movie is in THE hands — Steven Spielberg’s — they prove to only be minor annoyances.

It’s because of Spielberg that “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” accomplishes what it sets out to do — to give us old-school action with plenty of nostalgia for the first three movies — with flying colors.

There are the aforementioned 20th century super villains, jeep chases, wisecracks a-plenty from Ford, and the clincher — the revival of Allen and Ford’s romance with a kid drama to boot (Mr. Shia might actually be Mr. Indy).

None of it is anything new, but, of course, it’s not aiming to be. This is pure nostalgia cinema, old-fashioned thrills through and through. And the additions that actually manage to be new, Cate Blanchett as the head Russian and Ray Winstone as a slimy agent-at-large, fit in seamlessly with the series’ principles. They would be at home in any “Indy” film.

Still, the main star, aside from Ford, is (what else?) the action. Unfortunately, Spielberg has frontloaded the best sequences at the beginning, particularly an opening car race between the Russians and American teenagers and a motorcycle chase through Indy’s college, but there is enough action throughout to keep the movie from becoming “The Kingdom of the Artificial Hip.” Which is quite an accomplishment considering the step or three Ford has lost.

So, we get our whips, our snakes and our fedoras. Hell, we even get our aliens. If that’s not a good Indiana Jones movie, I don’t know what is. Ignore the haters. Drink from the crystal skull.

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Column: Newest ‘Indy’

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