The Kindom of the Crystal Skull

Despite having the worst name ever for a movie star, Shia LeBeouf does a pretty good job as a Fonzie wannabe who helps Indiana Jones wreck a large portion of South America to keep the world from being controlled by the Commies.

NOTE: Spoilers contained herein. If you want to remain in suspense about the mysterious secret of the crystal skulls, then skip this entry. I'm going to give it away. You've been warned.

You should also consider this a warning to skip the movie. "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is one of my all-time favorite movies, and will always be remembered fondly for the first time I saw it. I had no idea what it was about -- just that people had said I should see it. It was the first time I had waited in an around-the-block line to see a movie...and it was absolutely worth it. I was buzzing for days afterward.

(The only other time I stood in a line that long was for "Star Trek - The Motion Picture", aka "Star Trek - the Unforgivable Piece of Crap". As with most other Trek geeks, I was SO looking forward to that movie, and was SO bored by it. Oh sure, it was interesting in that we'd never seen a bald chick on the big screen before, and Veeger was OK as a Nomad retread, I suppose...and the new captain was fresh off the stunning success of "The Promise". But lord, it was boring!)

Anyway, this movie suffers from the same problem as that first Trek film -- no, not that Scotty had gotten fat...I'm talking about special effects for the sake of special effects. It seems that most of the movie is about running away from tumbling rocks, computer-generated ants, and elaborate pre-Columbian booby traps that still function efficiently after thousands of years. Even though they're made out of granite, have never ever been lubricated, and are covered with as much lichen as Rodman has tattoos.

You know, though, I totally bought that rather iffy concept in "Raiders". Why won't I accept it now? I don't know...perhaps it's because in the original, it was a tad more subtle. I suppose I can handle a few pneumatically-launched poison darts here and there, and one big-ass bowling ball rock running down the escape tunnel. But in "Skull", they go too far. The climactic scene might as well have been from a James Bond movie -- it's as if the writer said, "Dudes, I'm out of clever gags; let's just blow the whole thing up and then watch falling debris for 20 minutes."

In fact, the entire plot was kinda that way. "OK, like, I can't come up with any of that National Treasure connect-the-clues kind of archeological cleverness, so what the hell...we'll just blame it all on aliens. Yeah, that's right, and not only that, we'll use the Roswell aliens. Hey, we've already got Fonzie; why not add in Mork from Ork, too?"

You know, when a friend of mine first told me there were aliens in this film, I thought, "Cool. I dig aliens." The "X-Files" movie aside, it's tough to go wrong when you have bug-eyed space monsters. But these crystal skull guys were pretty lame. I mean "made for SciFi channel" lame. A transparent cranium that has the power to drive John Hurt crazy? C'mon -- John Hurt is pretty much crazy in ever movie he's ever made. I mean, the dude swallowed an entire alien baby once, for goodness sake. (And that was a much more interesting alien, at that.) And boy, when they demonstrated that the crystal skull also had the power to repel insects...I mean, whoa!

Did I say "whoa"? I meant "yawn". For one thing, I can accept a small amount of environmental overkill -- an underground temple full of snakes, for example...sure. A sewer full of rats and tarantulas? Well, tarantulas are solitary critters, so it seems a bit odd, but yeah, I suppose I can accept that there'd be enough food there to nourish a population that size. But when you show me enough ants to devour the entire Russian army blanketing square miles of jungle floor with mandible-clicking red horror, then I must say, "I am unwilling to suspend my disbelief any further, Mr. Spielberg. I defy you to show me an ecology in which that number of ants would be sustainable, given the indigenous food supply. After all, the colony was apparently there before the Commies started bringing in a steady supply of meaty comrades to lunch upon...so what were these ants supposed to be feeding themselves in order thrive in such numbers? Huh?"

And why do movie ants always make clicking noises? For that matter, why do movie Rooskies always talk with such hideous Rocky IV accents? Why does Cate Blanchette spell her name with a "C"? And why do the crystal skulls light up like lava lamps, and then mysteriously empower the alien skeletons to move as if they still had the muscles and tendons that were turned to dust a couple thousand years ago?

Don't get me wrong...I love animated skeletons. The old Ray Harryhausen stuff is delicious, and the Pirates of the Carribean are welcome to parade their bones across my TV screen any time they wish. But the difference is that those fellas were doing the "dem bones" thing due to magical spells; but we're led to believe that the Indiana Jones skeletors are just a bunch of interdimensional guys with advanced technology. Well, I hate to say this, but I have trouble with technology that restores life and animism to a long-fossilized corpse, just because its missing skull is lobbed into the general vicinity of its spinal column! And besides, the bones aren't even really bones -- they're made of glass!

Geez.

Anyway, the best parts of the movie (the banter between Indy and Caveman, er, I mean Mutt -- the motorcycling through the library -- the fact that Jones still has the hots for his old girlfriend even though he has aged far better than she has, and she's not really a good actress, anyway) were limited and scarce. The worst parts of the movie (the 400 Commies with machine guns who can't hit one old guy climbing boxes in a warehouse -- the sheer dumbness of having a swordfight on two speeding jeeps with conveniently-placed crotch-smacking vegetation -- and the muddled subplots about half-naked blowgun tomb defenders, lost explorers, and college professors who somehow manage to etch architecture diagrams into concrete cell floors), well, these are overdone, overlong, and unengaging. And when the alien skeleton dude does finally get his headbone reconnected to his neckbone, I really expected him to do something other than just...leave. Couldn't we at least have some sort of communication from him? Perhaps a "Live long and prosper" pronouncement...or even a "Be excellent to each other; and party on, Dudes!" Or even more satisfying -- have him whip out a ray guy, briefly explain the inherent flaws in the Socialist economic model, and then blast the bad guys to smithereens. Is that too much to ask?

Anyway, despite some charming stuff (such as gags paying homage to "Raiders", "Star Wars", and "Elephant Man"), the movie remains a bit of a disappointment. I suppose that we should all see it, just to keep up with our cultural literacy duties (and to provide context for the upcoming "Indiana Jones vs. the Old Dudes from 'Cocoon'" flick)...but I wouldn't recommend paying full price.

As for me, well, I shall promise to try to avoid using the word "Dudes" so many times in my future posts. As for you, my friends, have a great day!