Caffeinated Clint
By Captain Cumquat
Remember the feeling you got when you helped Indiana Jones discover the lost ark? The excitement? The comedy? The being 25 years younger? Well all except for us all being a bit older now, The ”Crystal Skull” managed to capture that magic again in a way that sequels (especially long awaited sequels) very rarely do! Sure some things have changed. The year is 1957. Indy isn’t the playboy he use to be. His dad has since passed on and his aim isn’t so good. But he’s still king of the witty one-liners, reigning champion of the treasure hunters (Sorry Nick Cage and Angelina Jolie) and he’s still very much not in love with snakes.
The cast was brilliantly placed. They brought back Karen Allen, the original love interest from ”Raiders of the Lost Ark”. Cate Blanchet plays a cold (if not a hottie) evil Russian psychic/mystic. And to my surprise, Shia LaBeouf was charming and fun in an adolescent trying-a-bit-too-hard greaser role. When his character is first introduced, it’s a bit off-putting that he is made to look almost exactly like Marlon Brando in ”The Wild Ones”. However, with so many iconic visual moments that they DID get right, this was among the very few that worked against the story.
As with all the prior Indy adventures, this one culminates with a supernatural twist that delves a bit further into Sci-fi than its predecessors, (Don’t worry, I’m not going to tell you what it is) but there was almost no where else the Indy chronicles could go to top the past adventures. Personally, I liked the twist and I thought it was in keeping with the progressively wild conclusions of the other three movies.
Directed by newcomer Stephen Spielberg, produced/written by first-timer George Lucas, with the help of their fresh-out-of-music-academy pal John Williams, one could easily mark this one up for beginners luck. (For those of you who missed the irony of the previous sentence, let me warn you that puberty is going to be rough when you get there.) Seriously though, it is all too common for a dream team like this one to assume that because they are all the gods of the silver screen, they self assuredly rest back on their laurels and crimp off a steaming box-office stinker. I’m pleased to report that all played the game like it was 1980 again ‘ Indy is back!
