Colin, what are you talking about?! It was pants and you know it!

First you wrote;

“And does Indiana Jones have any place in amongst the plethora of sharp action flicks grounded in realism? The short answer, ye of little faith, is yes.”

Then you wrote;

“Sure it’s thoroughly over-the-top and at times utterly implausible, but then, we don’t turn to Indiana Jones for realism.”

So what it is? realism or not?

I went to the advance screening at vue, I and most others in the cinema found it laughable in places it really shouldn’t have been. With action films you do have to accept a few improbable and implausible sequences, bullets always miss, characters can fall larger distances than in real life and be seemingly unaffected, but there is a line of implausibilty that cannot be crossed. Indiana runs away from five baddies with guns and they all miss; fine! Indiana survives a nuclear explosion by hiding inside a lead-lined fridge; pushing it! Indiana and co ride down what must be three of the biggest waterfalls in the world in a dinghy and not one of them falls out of the boat; Indy may as well have just grown a couple of wings and flown over the waterfalls, then flown back to the baddies and melted them with his heat ray vision!

They crossed the line of implausibility, and stepped into the zone of absurdity, over and over again until the point I wasn’t interested anymore. Mutt swinging through the jungle like tarzan with an army of monkeys. Mutt’s swordfight straddling the two cars, the ants, the aliens, the skull - had I been 10 years younger I might have eaten it up, but I’m 22, and was hoping this Indy would have universal appeal like the old ones. Don’t believe this review, it was not just the implausibility that made this bad, it was much more. The action was badly cut together and looked very messy. At one point Marion Ravenwood was driving through the jungle in a chase scene and appeared to have been knocked unconscious by a the low branch of a tree, then in the next shot of her she was fine. The story was a complete pile of tosh, some reject X-files idea involving rubbish looking aliens. The script was full of terrible lines, like John Hurt’s final explanantion of where the alien’s were going now (I won’t spoil it, it’s just too cringing for me to even type), and the jokes weren’t as funny as they should have been.

But the very worst part about it was that it could have been really good! It didn’t start off to badly, Harrison Ford was spot on, the aging, wily old Indy could have been a joy to watch. Shia LaBeouf was good, and the brawl in the diner near the start was very funny! The overall impression by the end was that George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg believe they are now so big, they can come up with any stupid idea they want, do it in any stupid way they want, and everyone will still say they are great. The Star Wars prequels showed this wasn’t true, what more eveidence do we need now?!

Don’t believe this review; the film is worth two stars because the cast is good and there are still one or two moments of brilliance. If you go and see it then make sure you do suspend your disbelief, and your sanity.