Dr. Jones is back, painfully
(Updated 5/23 — be sure to see comment below)
The cold, dreary weather outside is a cinema owner’s dream, especially when a certain snake-fearing professor in a fedora returns to crack the whip.
Besides last night’s midnight premiere, Movieworks has five screenings of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: 4:15, 5, 7, 8 and 9:30 p.m. There will be two additional matinees at 1:30 and 2 p.m. over Memorial Day weekend. (Movie listings always can be found here.)
The N.Y. Times review laments the lack of “any sense of rediscovery,” and there are plenty of reader comments decrying the efforts of Lucas and Spielberg, but you’d have to work pretty hard to spoil the fun of an Indiana Jones movie. Then again, the Star Wars prequels kind of sucked.
We have idolized Harrison Ford since Han Solo first fired the Millennium Falcon into hyperspace, but that boy crush turned man crush was cemented when, on our first or second day of work in Jackson Hole, Ford came into Billy’s Burgers for lunch. We knew we were in the right place.
Since then we have followed his exploits running the Snake River and swooping in with his helicopter to rescue a sick hiker in the Tetons. At 65, he continues to be an inspiration for us all, especially to anyone who has seen him work the bar at Rendezvous Bistro.
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May 22nd, 2008 at 11:01 pm
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
That seemed to be Indy’s secret code to us, like a Peruvian pictograph that when deciphered says this movie is a horrible exercise beyond his control.
It was a cinema goer’s nightmare, seeing one of your heroes stumble through a bad acid trip. The movie failed on so many levels, lurching between eras with one-dimensional characters and a plot that was incredulous even for Indiana Jones fans. For an action film, it had a heavily sedated quality to it, owing mostly to the writing; lines hung around the actors’ necks like a medallion of cinder blocks.
And I won’t even reveal the worst of the Lucas mythology that elicited groans, save to say there’s another annoying kid who shows up wielding a knife like a light saber.
The audience staggered out of the theater like a boxer after a 15-round bout.
Lucas and Spielberg appeared to have been suffering from 1980s flashbacks. Back then, Harrison Ford made every kid want to be a hero. It’s time for us to come up with new ones.
May 24th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
It’s not bad if you seldom go to movies or are under 12. Ideally, be both. The audience at my showing lumbered out mumbling things like “Hm, it’s raining again.” Considering the hype and expectations, such indifference was awesome.
George “Story By” Lucas ridiculously piles on cuteness from of a laundry list of Fifties iconography — UFOs, the Red Scare, Brando, brainwashing, A-bombs, McCarthyism — yet no one can muster the authenticity of, say, The Fonz.
If only that was the worst of the nostalgia. Sadly, “Indiana Jones and the Repository of Kitsch” is desperately nostalgic for the original Indiana Jones movie. At least Harrison has aged wonderfully if the franchise has not.
If you’re looking for a movie treat like Spielberg at his best, that would be “Iron Man.”
May 26th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
While the typical opening action scene of Crystal Skull lived up to those of it’s predecessors, the movie went downhill quick after that. Spielberg’s eye was as good as ever throughout, but unfortunately Skull will be remembered for proving for the fourth time in 10 years that George Lucas can no longer write.
May 27th, 2008 at 8:37 pm
The movie cost $185 million to make. Paramount is spending $150 on marketing it.
from today’s NY Times:
LOS ANGELES — The hard sell worked. “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” pushed by one of the biggest marketing campaigns in Hollywood history, sold an estimated $151.1 million in tickets in North American theaters over the five-day holiday weekend.
The box office gross, generated between Thursday and Monday, put to rest questions about whether one of moviedom’s most popular characters could strike a cultural chord after a 19-year hiatus from the big screen. Overseas the movie, which generated mixed reviews from critics, sold an estimated $143 million in tickets between Thursday and Sunday; Monday estimates were unavailable.