I Like Ike

Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Directed by Steven Spielberg. Starring Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, and Karen Allen.

Seeing Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at the Uptown Theater, a local landmark, brought back fond memories of seeing the first installment, Raiders of the Lost Ark with my father. I'm thirty-four now, and I was uhm, seven when I saw Raiders.

I've grown up with Indiana Jones, and the big budget summer spectacle. It seems almost pointless to review the latest installment. Sure, it isn't as good as Raiders but that film was a marvellous little freak, a truly memorable piece of pop ephemera. Either you like this sort of thing or you don't, and nothing I say will convince you either way.

Big budget action spectacles can be deceptive, and not just figuratively, but also literally. Only half an airplane was used during the famous fight scene in Raiders. I admire that sort of ingenuity, and I think it's one of the reasons why American films are so popular. A film's budget isn't as important as the size of it's heart. The budgets for the Indiana Jones flicks have bloomed, but the heart of the film has shrunk, at least just a little bit, since The Last Crusade.

I think Lucas and Spielberg played it smart by letting the character age along with the actor who plays him, Harrison Ford. Batman and James Bond are characters who are easy to reboot with different actors, but Ford's "everyman" look would be hard to replicate. Even in this outing, Ford's stubble is looking more carefully trimmed than it was in Raiders or Temple of Doom.

Almost as important as the star, are the two men behind the camera. Say what you will about the sequels, but I can't imagine any director brave enough to make their leading man wear brown (or brownish hues) from head to toe for an entire film. If directors like the Wachowski Brothers can't quite match what Spielberg did in Raiders with their films, it's in large part because they don't have his go to hell sensibility. P.J. O'Rourke was right: age and guile do in fact, beat youth, innocence and a bad haircut.