INDIANA JONES IV - Ray's review!

Steven Spielberg Written by: David Koepp (screenplay), George Lucas (story) Staring: Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Shia LaBeouf, Karen Allen, Ray Winstone, John Hurt,Jim Broadbent, Igor Jijikine, Alan Dale, Andrew Divoff Distributed by Paramount Pictures Film is released worldwide on May 22nd 2008 Review by Ray DeRousse

rating: 0.1

Some reviewers have given the new INDIANA JONES film some rather high praise. Others have given it a "pass," saying that it's nice to have Indy back despite the lackluster adventure in this film. Those people are wrong. Dead motherfucking wrong. Let's get this statement of fact out into the open from the beginning: this film was made in order to make an outrageous profit for GEORGE LUCAS, STEVEN SPIELBERG, and HARRISON FORD. There was no burning, must-tell story here; it wouldn't have taken fifteen years to hammer out the plot if the story had been inspired and original. The greatest pop songs are often written in thirty minutes or less - they come from the moment, and touch the heart of their listeners. The original RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK was basically written during a beachside holiday between Lucas and Spielberg. Creative inspiration provided the fuel for that classic adventure. By comparison, this story appears to have been created by drawing plot points out of a fedora while being coerced by stockholders armed with machine guns. The plot, such as it is, involves a crystal skull that belongs to an alien skeleton secluded deep inside a lost city of gold commonly known as El Dorado. Along the way, Indy manages to escape a nuclear holocaust, a swarm of killer ants, and a reunion with Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), which also involves the son they sired together during their adventures years earlier. NOTE TO APOLOGISTS: I realize you want to insist on a fun, thought-free adventure movie. Please keep reading. The original RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK was a monumentally fun adventure movie, filled to the top with terrific stunts, snappy dialogue, and mystical hocus-pocus. No film can hope to reach those simple, effervescent heights. The two sequels attempted to match the dizzying spell cast by the original film, but both failed to individual degrees. Here's why: - RAIDERS was not a stupid film.While the movie is funny, it's not at the expense of the characters or the situations. The most outrageous and cartoony moment in the movie comes when the bad guy burns his hand, and stumbles into the snow to cool himself off. It's a slightly silly moment, but believable in the context of the film. The rest of the film is played straight and realistic, with the humor being derived from the characters and situations. - RAIDERS had believable action. While many of the stunts in the film are jaw-dropping and probably impossible in real-life, they are performed by real stunt men in real time, adding to their believability. - RAIDERS invested in character moments. Remember the early moment when Indy celebrates his acceptance on the mission, fired up with passion at the prospect of becoming famous? How about when Marion outdrinks her opponent in her bar? Or the moment when Indy decides to shoot the sword-wielding bad guy rather than fight? These small moments linger because the film takes the time to highlight them. The two sequels betrayed these qualities in various degrees. TEMPLE OF DOOM reveled in silly and nonsensical moments, while LAST CRUSADE plunged headlong into comedy at the expense of believability. The fairly realistic template established by RAIDERS gave way to mine cars leaping implausibly across chasms, beating hearts being ripped from chests, and ridiculous tank fights and umbrellas defeating airplanes. Much of the silliness of the sequels can be forgiven because the stories and characters were well-defined, and the action was a clever mix of stuntwork and limited optical effects. The car going over the hill in RAIDERS was a poor matte job on a model car, but we forgave its roughness because the rest of the chase was spectacular stuntwork that lent the film a realism unmatched by special effects. The same is true of the aforementioned mine care chase, or the tank battle. Even in the worst moments, these films provided us with realistic thrills and incredible stunts. And now, we have this. I mention the previous films because this is, of course, the fourth film in the INDIANA JONES saga. In that regard, then, the film must be inevitably compared to its predecessors ... whether the die-hard fanboys want to admit it or not. As an INDIANA JONES film, this movie is a colossal disaster; it breaks nearly every rule mentioned above. We have CGI prairie dogs providing unnecessary reaction shots during an important chase. We have CGI monkeys teaching Tarzan to Indy's son. We have a plot so forced and convoluted that we would need another entire movie to unlock the secrets of the story in this one. The action is absolutely unbelievable - and I mean that in the worst possible way. Imagine the Jeep chase in RAIDERS, except that everything onscreen is blatantly and relentlessly CGI. Remember the RAIDERS moment when Indy is straddling the wheel and hanging on for dear life? Well, here we have Indy's son straddling two cars in the dense jungle, all the while getting hit in the balls repeatedly by CGI bushes. There is not a single, solitary moment in this movie that Indy or anyone else is in danger. They just dance gingerly around the blue-screen stage and let the ILM artists create the danger around them. And worst of all, the film does not allow for even a moment of character development. Indy discovers that he has a son during one of the monotonous action sequences, and his reaction is akin to discovering that he has a booger hanging from his nose. Quality actors like JOHN HURT and RAY WINSTONE are wasted in characters that come and go without any background, purpose, or continuity. It's as if this is an INDIANA JONES video game, and everyone and everything around Indy is a swirl of pointlessness. HARRISON FORD is pretty convincing in his recreation of Indy, although the character has morphed into a very cranky, humorless shell of his former self. KAREN ALLEN returns as Marion Ravenwood, although she is reduced to hollow, phony bickering with Indy when she is not Prozac-smiling into the distance. SHIA LABEOUF does what he can with a thankless role; the finale hints at LaBeouf taking over the Indy role, which is most unwelcome. CATE BLANCHETT collected a paycheck, which I wholeheartedly hope she uses to hire a new agent. None of these on-screen stars can make an impression against the most obvious presence in this film: George F. Lucas. From the psychic monkeys, to the Caddyshack groundhogs, to the nuclear-safe refrigerators, to the self-referential quotations, to the computer-generated everything, Lucas' fingerprints are all over every single copy of this film. Academy award winners and nominees like Spielberg and Ford should be able to stand up to Lucas and his team of mentally-challenged adopted kids, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Whatever infantile idea popped into Lucas' head made it onto the screen intact, and the INDIANA JONES series is worse for it. Anyone still hungering for another dose of the morose, digitally-overloaded STAR WARS prequels will find more than enough hazy, pixelated nonsense on which to chew. As I said from the start, this film did not need to be made. The story was complete by any reasonable standard back in 1989. The fifteen years of public squabbling over the script revealed the lack of inspiration behind the project; the timetable set by Ford only added to the problem. It was made because each of the three primary movers of this franchise stand to walk away with a cool $100 million dollars. So, in order to cash in on the goodwill of moviegoers, this horribly-written, self-referential shitstorm of nostalgia was whipped together on the blue-screen soundstages of ILM and tossed into theaters as quickly as possible. Anyone who claims that this movie is acceptable - either as an Indy film or as a stand-alone film - is fooling themselves completely. This is nothing more than a very expensive, digitally-altered scrapbook with the best pictures removed. Shame on you, Lucas and Spielberg.