Summer Movie Season Has Arrived

[kivrin]

It has, thanks be to God, cooled off from the ugly humid mess of Tuesday, but even so I decreed it to be Summer Movie Time and so breadandroses and I went to see the new Indiana Jones. I really enjoyed it. I was hoping it would be more witty, but I really enjoyed it. I had popcorn and a soda and Marion Ravenwood - it was awesome.

HOWEVER. There were some choice sillinesses.



WTF groundhogs? GROUNDHOGS? Or prairie dogs, I don't know. Small burrowing flatland creatures, why are you in an Indiana Jones movie?

OSCAR MIKE GOLF GRATUITOUS ATOMIC BOMB. We all joke that Harrison Ford is indestructible, but for not only the bad guys to outrun an air burst in their commiemobile, but for Indy to survive by hiding in a refrigerator...?! It's like a parody. Which, I suppose, is the point. (And I guess Harrison Ford got his fill of realistic depictions of radiation exposure on K-19, when he got to do the comic-book Russian accent... but anyway.) As I said to breadandroses, I didn't realize that when they brought in that Atomic Cafe neon sign, it would have to go off in the first act. Also, I think that the whole mushroom cloud thing will be a dealbreaker for my mom. Harrison Ford was her movie boyfriend for twenty years, but when he left his wife for Calista Flockhart it was ALL OVER between him and mom. So her attendance at Crystal Skull is not the given it would once have been, and when you add in her child-of-the-cold-war Bomb anxiety, I'm thinking it might not go well.

The motorcycle chase cracked me the hell up, especially Indy slithering in and out of the car windows, but as with the atomic bomb, it's beyond the "oh, haha, he can scramble all over a moving car with a wounded arm but only after he's kicked all the Nazis off does it hurt" into "and then his leg regenerated!" territory.

I wish the between-story for Marion and Indy had been that she left him. Because I don't like her being all faithful-silent-jilted-chick. I frickin' LOVE her being "shut up, I know what I'm doing" chick.

I got really tired of triple-agent guy.

The choice to make the film in a somewhat period way (for example, the use of indoor sets for scenes like entering and leaving the cemetery) sat a bit oddly with the modern cgi, but I think it worked in the sense of subtly giving the this-is-an-old-fashioned-adventure message.

Epic fail for the Tribe What Protekts Teh Sekrit Place. Yes, I saw the token black guy in Indy's class; that is not license to deploy skanky imperialistic stereotypes. Wasn't there an uproar about that when Temple of Doom came out? In, y'know, 1985? "Oh, hai, we are Indian natives! We eat live snakes and eyeballs! And pull hearts from chests, yessir! Nous n'avons pas de drapeau! Nous habitons ici!"

I agree with the New Yorker review that Harrison Ford seemed to be trying too hard and that the whole thing was creakier than the earlier films. But swashbuckling fun was still to be had, and Indy is still an excellent hero. Mmmm, action academic.

Comments

[heron-pose.livejournal.com]

I second many of your above reservations ... and add to it the "wtf? Jim Broadbent got his job back AND Jones got made assoc. dean for why? b/c they met some aliens who love knowledge?"

Sad, cuz I loved the Atomic Cafe gag, and I loved that the Red Scare raised its head, but I hated that it all got (badly) papered over in the end, and esp. that Marion (why does she spell her name the Boy way, anyhow?) got so little to do, in the end.

We thought token black guy was anachronistic, as were the black couple who entered the diner during Indy's chat w/Mutt (who I thought said his name was "Mud", LOL) ... but in the end, too much w/the leg regeneration and imperialism (O HAI. WE ARE WHITE PEEPLEZ COME TO PLAY ON UR CONTINENZ)

I have a longer rant stored up -- sorry to unleash its shadow on your lj. but i'm kinda glad my mom didn't live to see it.

[kivrin.livejournal.com]

who I thought said his name was "Mud", LOL

SO DID WE OMG.

The other day I called my mom and told her all about it. Well, not about Mud, but about the Bomb and the fridge and the general lack of wit.

Word, also, on Token Black Guy. I was like "nice try, but NO." (Did you ever see _Mona Lisa Smile_? breadandroses's sister was at Wellesley while that was being filmed, and even though there in fact WERE black women at Wellesley during the period the film covered, the filmmakers refused to cast black students as extras. Can't suggest that women's colleges were anything but a place to hang out while waiting for one's M.R.S., after all.)

I appreciate your rant!