(2 out of 5 stars)

Where do I start with this mess of a movie? My issues basically are the acting, the script, and the script, as well as the script. It is sad that movies like National Treasure and The Mummy have successfully taken the action adventure genre from its beginnings with Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark and that the originator has digressed into this pile of rehashed unoriginal relic. 

Harrison Ford continues to do one of his great acting jobs just like Firewall, Hollywood Homicide and K-19:The Widowmaker. Some great actors just start doing crap in old age because they can. Think of Anthony Hopkins and Al Pacino. They’ve had some good and bad, but recently Harrison Ford has just been down. His charm in this film was lacking. He too easily just follows Shia LaBeouf’s character without giving him any crap. He then chooses to start playing dad in a Sean Connery sort of way once he finds out (SPOILER ALERT) that Shia is his son. This is partly a script issue, but Ford could have at least been convincing. Secondly, Ford just looks tired. Granted he is 65 years old and plays a 60-something in the movie, but what we have come to understand about Indiana Jones is that he is ageless. Jones continues with the same energy as 30 years ago. Ford looks like he may drop over any minute. And by the way, who was costuming Ford? His clothes sagged on him like some old man, rather than an adventurer.

As George Lucas proved with the three recent Star Wars movies, he cannot write a script to save his life. For some reason, Lucas decided to rehash old Indiana Jones shtick as well as a scene from American Graffiti. Can he not come up with anything original? We get a snake in a very unusual place. It is as if it came from nowhere. It does not belong in the scene except for Lucas to be able to wink at his audience. And the ants, which look much more like those beetles from The Mummy. What are hoards of ants doing in one area eating people like they are made of nothing? This makes utterly no sense.

We love Indiana Jones because he can get out of any situation typically by being an adventurer not by being Bruce Willis from Die Hard or some crafty person like Pierce Brosnan from The Thomas Crown Affair. He is not Arnold Schwartzeneggar from True Lies. In part four, Jones is doing things that no person can do like survive not one but three waterfalls, and have Shia swing on vines like he is Tarzan with CG monkeys.

We also love Indiana Jones because he is a man of science and history who is also a man of faith, questioning faith. He searches for the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant and is so honored to know they exist; he does not even want them in the public’s eyes as he loses the grail and stores the ark away. Finding those things makes him believe in his faith more. In Temple of Doom, he learns of mystical stones that bring peace to an ancient civilization. He sees how he can help people and understand more about faith. What does he learn from the crystal skulls? We never get to see him question the power of the skulls. We never get to understand his reason for finding them? Is it purely to find his old friend poorly played by John Hurt? Oh and then there is Karen Allen, and now I missed her. She has very little point of being in this movie. He does not get to question the idea of the skulls, which in doing a little research, you can find that this would have been a very interesting idea, but did you ever think you would put the words Indiana Jones with aliens from alternate dimensions in the same sentence? Exactly.

This movie will not have the longevity of the other three and the franchise has been tarnished. Looks like they may choose to revive the franchise with Shia. If they do, let’s hope that he becomes more like he was in Transformers than this Indy film. Let’s forget the past and make Indy for a new group of viewers just like is about to happen with Terminator. Too bad Indy 4 won’t become a relic, in 50 years, no one will even be looking for it on the video store shelf.

Similar recommended titles: Indiana Jones 1, 2 or 3 and The Mummy