I said I wasn't going to review this one. And at the time I meant it. This was primarily because I couldn't find the rough draft I originally wrote. I know I should've just left it there and ignored this one entirely. But I can't. So rather than write a full review – which I really have no motivation for – I'm just going to do a quick breakdown of what I feel worked, and didn't work about Indy 4.
What Worked
— Harrison Ford. For the first time in years, Ford felt alive and enjoying himself. Indy is older and wearier but he's still got that "I don't know, I'm making this up as I go" attitude.
— John Williams' score.
— The 50s setting.
— The fact Indy still wears a bowtie when teaching. Bowties are cool.
— Taking us back to the warehouse from the end of Raiders was great and remains the only standout sequence in the film.
— It doesn't have an awkward looking CGI de-aged leading man that makes it difficult to get through the prologue.
What Didn't Work
— Nuking the fridge. It's a dumb moment, but also a completely unnecessary one. He's already escaped the bad guys, why have him escape them further by somehow randomly wandering into a nuclear test site?
— Marion. Her entire role (and rushed reconciliation and marriage to Indy), just feels like fanservice for die hard Raiders fans, but somehow they also managed to isolate all the really annoying parts of her character and multiply them.
—Shia LaBeouf. Need I say more.
— Completely wasting Ray Winstone, John Hurt and Jim Broadbent.
— Cate Blanchett's Russian accent. Did she think this was a comedy?
— The Russians in general. The Indiana Jones movies have never really been all that imaginative when it comes to villains and often just settle for some poor variation of Belloq and his Nazi goons.
— Dialogue. The first three movies are all full of amazing lines (especially the third one), but there's nothing memorable here, not even the awkward bad dialogue of the Star Wars prequels, everything just sounds so bland.
— There's no such thing as a badly directed Spielberg movie, but here it never feels like his heart is really in it, like he only made this movie as a favour to George Lucas.
— Majority of the action scenes just aren't Indiana Jones enough.
— LaBeouf. So bad he was worth mentioning twice. And maybe a third time. But that would be it.
— Those monkeys. Bad GCI, bad! No biscuit.
— The Aliens. I don't have a problem with the fact there are aliens in the movie, it's the fact they're called inter-dimensional beings. If you're going to do 50s pulp sci-fi, at least commit to the bit.
— The fact that we just didn't need it at all. Last Crusade was a perfect ending. The only thing worse than a bad sequel is an bad and completely unnecessary one.
One and a half out of fourth movies we all couldn't happily done without.
Mark Greig has been writing for Doux Reviews since 2011 More Mark Greig
Are we reviewing movies that don't exist? Is it a prank?
ReplyDeleteAmen, sister!
DeleteYeah I don't get it. Some weird universe where they kept making Indiana Jones movies and they were super awful? We all know they only made three and Shia LeBoeuf has nothing whatsoever to do with the franchise and never ever will.
DeleteOne of the few things for which I can be thankful as I age and my memory gradually declines is that, although I'm reasonably certain I saw this film, I have virtually no recollection of it at all.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, this applies to both bad films and good ones.
I honestly couldn't remember this movie, either. With the Indy movies, I stopped at the third, and I think I'm okay with that decision.
ReplyDeleteMark, thanks for doing this one. We were all talking recently about reviews we're missing, and this is one of them. It's nice that we now have reviews for all five Indy movies.