Directors: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Karen Allen, Shia LaBeouf, Ray Winstone, John Hurt
Genre: Action, Adventure
Rated: PG-13
Plot: In this fourth installment, Jones makes his come back during the cold War. He must return a ancient artifact to its resting place before the red communists can get their hands on it and use it to take over the world.

My Review: It was great to see Indy return to the big screen. All jokes about Harrison Ford’s age aside (and I made plenty of them), he did a great job recreating his most famous role. There was just as much action of the type Indiana Jones fans have come to expect in this movie as in the past three. So if you love to watch Indy jump from car to car and punch out bad guys you’re in for a treat. Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of my favorite movies of all time. None of the other three compare to the original. However, while The Temple of Doom was just plain bad, I thought that Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (KOTCS), like The Last Crusade, captured the essential elements of an Indiana Jones flick, humor, action, irony, and of course a globe spanning plot to take over the world using an ancient relic.

Many years have passed since the last Indiana Jones movie and I thought KOTCS did a good job of dealing with that time within the movie by moving the setting to post WWII in to the Cold War era. The creators of this film also took advantage of changes outside of the movie by incorporating high quality CGI for the special effects. The writers took a page out of the National Treasure and well… unfortunately the X-Files. I don’t want to include any spoilers in this film so I will leave it at an X-Files reference. If you’ve seen the movie, you’ll know what I mean. I wish they had stuck to ancient mysteries and left out the Indiana Jones meets the X-Files stuff. There were also a number of things dealing with that part of the plot which I felt were inconsistent and made no sense. I’m happy to report that this is my biggest complaint about the film.

It was obvious that this film was intended to be a passing of the torch for the Indiana Jones films. They tied up a lot of loose ends. It was also nice to see the return of Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood, Indiana Jones true love from the first film. I liked the way the movie ended between the Indy and Marion. They practically hit you over the head with the symbolism of Shia LaBeouf’s character, Mutt Williams, being the one Indy is handing off too. I’m not sure I’ll be able to buy Shia LaBeouf as Indiana Jones though. I’ll be interested to see if Spielberg and Lucas can actually pull of an elegant way for Mutt Williams to become Indiana Jones if they make another film. Based on the Star Wars movies I will tell you that George Lucas isn’t known for this.

In any case, the bottom line is that, I really enjoyed this movie. Indiana Jones 4: The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was fun and entertaining. As long as you don’t think too much and try to connect the dots outside of the plot shown on screen you should enjoy it too. Like Star Wars, I also really enjoyed being able to share with my kids one of my favorite movie heroes from my childhood. Go see it.

Rating: 4/5 stars
High Point: Car chase through the Amazonian Jungle
Low Point: X-Files-esque part of the plot line.

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