Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008, Steven Spielberg) (Patreon)

44/100

Second viewing, last seen the night it opened*. And once was enough, frankly, but my dad was browsing various streaming sites, looking for something we could watch together, and after seeing him pause for the auto-preview of several dire-looking Netflix and Amazon "originals," I suggested this in desperation, since we already had tickets for Dial of Destiny the following day (his birthday). Thought at first that I might've been overly harsh in '08—Blanchett's having a contagious blast rolling her tongue around a brusque Russian accent, leaning into cartoon villainy to a degree that I doubt Mikkelsen could possibly match, and Spielberg still knows his way around rousing showmanship, e.g. the shot of an as-yet-unseen Indy picking his hat up from the ground that then booms slightly up to show his shadow on the side of an Army jeep as he carefully places it back atop his head (which of course is the point at which John Williams first gives us a low hint of the Raiders march). The whole Area 51 business, locating one crate among many via airborne gunpowder drawn to its magnetized contents (and doing so under duress, to boot), feels of a piece with previous adventures. But so much of what follows is just so very dumb. While "Nuke the fridge" came perilously close to replacing "jump the shark," it's Mutt and the monkeys' Tarzan routine that truly verges on insulting, followed too closely by some of the lamest CGI killer ants imaginable. Crystal Skull flatlines during that lengthy sequence (which I believe also includes, a bit earlier, the lame ostensible comedy of Indy being rescued from quicksand via an enormous snake that he's loath to grab hold of) and never recovers; given what happens at the end of both Raiders and Last Crusade, it's dicey to argue that telepathic aliens are egregiously over the top for this franchise, but somehow religious mythology seems in bounds to me, whereas extraterrestrial goofiness does not. Also, I waited 27 years for Karen Allen to return, and I remain unhappy, another 15 years on, that Marion got reduced to The Mom in a bickering-family yukfest. SHE'S HIS GODDAMN PARTNER! 

* Not sure why I didn't have access to a press screening. Maybe that was right around the time that my freelance situation was starting to disintegrate due to the subprime mortgage crisis (which would force me to leave NYC a year later, after I'd burned through my savings). In any case, I never reviewed Crystal Skull, or even posted thoughts on the nerd group. Nor had I thought about it since.