Culture Club goes Indy
There’s nothing like a good old veritable romp in the cinema and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was just that, nothing like one.
Lovingly hand crafted by the accomplished magi Lucas and Spielberg over many years, forged in the deepest recesses of Hollywood with one of the strongest iconic heroes of our generation as its metal -and then blessed with the latest magic of digital arts technology, I was somewhat looking forward to a rapier of a film to lead this summer’s wave of new releases and thrust through the swathes of audience cynicism.
I think we got something more akin to a butter knife.
Despite Ford’s usual expert brandishing of whatever he is given, (still the best action hero of his generation in my book by a country mile), this film is guilty of one of the worst sins a film can commit – not knowing what it is about. Chucking the kitchen sink at this film was too much; adding the floorboards, radiators and doorframes then starts to become criminal vandalism.
Ok, there were occasional nice moments, clever references, the usual imaginative scenery but the after-taste of disappointment takes a long time to disperse. The only way I think the film could have been saved would have been to stick Mel Brooks in the director’s chair and properly develop this movie into what it clearly was –the Space Balls of Indiana Jones.