Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

What’s it about?
Indy goes in search of a magical plot device who’s major power is the ability to retroactively make me hate the rest of the Indiana Jones series. 

Any chicks in the movie?
Cate Blanchett as a sexy KGB officer and Karen Allen as a woman who hasn’t been in a movie in twenty-five years. 

Awesomeness Factor?
Zero. This is an absolute travesty of a motion picture, made by people who long ago forgot anything that they knew about making movies and, apparently, don’t care. I wasn’t expecting much from this movie in the first place, mostly because the Indy series as a whole isn’t all that great to begin with – sure, Raiders is the shizznit, but Temple Of Doom was really pretty bad and Last Crusade was only slightly above average. Based on that, I was expecting something in the “better than Temple, not as good as Raiders” territory, which quite frankly is good enough for me these days. So imagine my surprise when Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of Whatever The Fuck managed to consistently cornhole every single element of the Jones series. Jesus, where to start? OK, first of all, the bulk of the opening hour or so is spent in an absurd amount of exposition, which is nonsense because this is supposed to be  a FUCKING ADVENTURE MOVIE. Here’s an idea, Mr. Greatest Director In The World – how about you SHOW ME SOMETHING WITH YOUR FANCY PICTURE-MAKING APPARATUS instead of yammering about new-agey Mayan fucking alien worship bullshit or whatever the Christ the backstory of this goddamn movie is supposed to be. Oh, yeah, by the way, did I mention there were aliens? Not that aliens are a bad idea in and of themselves – tying the Indiana Jones mythos to the flying-saucer craze of the 50s is sort of inspired, actually – but these particular aliens are magical gay aliens with detachable skulls that issue forth whatever lame power is needed by the screenwriters to move the plot forward at any given moment. Hey, remember when Indy used to, like, shoot the fucking bad guys? In Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Fuckwitted Shitheads, all of those cool scenes of Indy whippin’ his way through hordes of (in this case) Russian badasses are now replaced by the 185-year-old John Hurt waiving around a skull. That’s it. There’s no traps to solve, no badguys to best, no nothing. Got a problem with a door? Whip out the skull! Hey, is that a horde of CGI ants coming to eat us? The skull will protect you! And speaking of CGI, the effects in this movie – and there is a fuckton of it, starting in around the ten-second mark – is total shit. I mean green-screen-circa-1988 shit. Um, Mr. Lucas? DON’T YOU OWN INDUSTRIAL LIGHT AND MAGIC??? Didn’t you, like, INVENT THE ABSTRACT CONCEPT OF COMPUTER GENERATED IMAGERY? And you know what? Because cheesy CGI is basically the pulp of today, I could have even gotten over that. But what I can’t get over is how clearly nobody involved with this movie cared enough to even try. It’s not just a bad movie; it’s actually insulting. I would feel less angry if Spielberg had come to my house, punched me in the mouth, and took a couple of bucks for the rental fee. 

Mitigated By?
Nothing. There is no good to be found here, only sadness.