Bring Me The Skull Of Henry Jones, Jr

Best opening graf for a review ever:

"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." Say it aloud. The very title causes the pulse to quicken, if you, like me, are a lover of pulp fiction. What I want is goofy action--lots of it. I want man-eating ants, swordfights between two people balanced on the backs of speeding jeeps, subterranean caverns of gold, vicious femme fatales, plunges down three waterfalls in a row, and the explanation for flying saucers. And throw in lots of monkeys.

Many people know that Raiders is my favorite all-time movie (tied with Casablanca). It was also the last movie Dad ever saw without me to make sure its "disturbing" content was suitable. So of course we had to go see #3 (yes, I said #3, because there was this horrible mass hallucination that there was some movie about a temple, but it never actually existed) on opening day.

It did not disappoint. It's a great B-movie, did a wonderful job of integrating the very old cast members into a fun, updated story with the perfect amount of paranoia that makes you wonder if it's 1957 or 2008. The movie paid not-entirely-subtle homage to the original, Last Crusade, the short-lived TV series, Star Wars, ET, and Close Encounters, with familiar lines and some twists on trademarks veteran Indy fans would expect. It also brought a proper sense of closure to the franchise.

This last installment made NTodd very happy.

ntodd

[Update: as I'm watching Raiders for probably the 300th time (that's not an exaggeration), I realized I forgot to mention one thing: use of the Wilhelm Scream was appropriately, cheesily frequent, and made me laugh every time.]