Indiana Jones and the kingdom of the crystal skulls, a review!

The latest Indiana Jones installment from Stephen Spielberg falls short of the mark set by its predecessors, way short. The storyline is haphazard at the very best and does not cross all the t’s. The story is based primarily on the legend of the El Dorado, the mystical city of gold. The legend is that this city is built primarily of gold or that is how the story goes. The city is just a legend but going by it, it is a city that is built on gold and nothing else, something that this movie has played with.

In addition, the Indiana Jones, most of the installments had a very interesting prelude to the main movie, something that set the tone for the rest of the movie. But this one seems to have given all that a miss except for a nuclear explosion. What makes this a bit laughable is that a common refrigerator, one that is lead lined is supposed to offer one protection from a nuclear bomb. That is laughable at the very best, what a lead lined refrigerator will do is offer you protection from the radiation at the very best but not from the explosion, even a 6th grader would know that. But then again, we have to believe that it does and go with that.

The story line is not remarkable at all, from the quest of a missing friend to that of the city, the storyline is too vapid, one that is full of vapors, probably from all the helium, that we all need to see this movie with. The saving grace for this movie comes in the form of cate blanchett, who has performed her role to the very best, even exceeding it at certain points in the movie. It is a real pity that the story was too blasé to take advantage of her performance. For she made one of the best villains known so far, with all the series taken together. Her cool hard glaze was believable and her expressions of doubt that flashed across her face as she stood in the way of the moving truck did wonders to her performance.

For the story itself, well it seems that Stephen Spielberg did not do all the necessary hard work, for it would seem foolhardy to make a movie that uses archeology as a premise and connect it to outer space. But that is what has happened, with half the world believing that UFO’s are not real and the other half believing in them to the extent that half of the believers think that the UFO’s are a part of some government conspiracy, it is no wonder that this movie is not as popular as the rest of the series. For one, had the storyline been set in Russia, it may have seemed plausible. Anyway the damage is done and this is not a movie for serious moviegoers. The stunts, booby-traps and the rich content has all but disappeared from this movie. This is more like a B-grade movie at the very best and we can but pray that the next one, if there is going to be one will fare much better.