November 17, 2008

What Happened To Indiana Jones? 

I am not really all that good at getting out to see movies in the theaters. It’s not only that I don’t like paying $15 for tickets and $11.50 for a bucket of popcorn saturated with bright yellow motor oil. I’ve just never been all that wild about the way my sneakers stick to the concrete floor under the seats.

So I just got around to renting the DVD and watching the latest Harrison Ford movie, Indiana Jones And Something Or Other About Some Kind Of Skull. Now I don’t normally write movie reviews, but I feel that in this case I need to share my considered thoughts on this film, especially for the benefit of any of you who have not yet plopped down $3 to take it home and see it.

Don’t do it! This movie stank up my house worse than a goldfish under the sofa cushion!

Just in case any of you didn’t understand that delicate simile, I will explain: I did not care very much for the film.

From the opening scene with its obnoxiously computer-generated prairie dog, past Cate Blanchett sporting the worst Russian accent in show business history, through a jungle full of obnoxiously computer-generated monkeys, and right up to the Indiana Jones Hat Gag just before the closing credits, I sat and wondered if maybe Steven Spielberg and George Lucas shouldn’t consider hanging it up and buying a fishing charter business in the Bahamas. Even the John Williams music, with that wonderful “Bam-pa-da-pa, bam-pa-da” Indiana Jones theme, couldn’t save this thing.

And Harrison Ford couldn’t save it.

I will admit that I have had a bit of a man-crush on Harrison Ford ever since he blazed like a comet across my television screen in his role as “Beach Patrol Cop” in that memorable 1968 episode of Mod Squad. Years later, when he sat at the controls of the starship Millennium Falcon wearing the same dopey look on his face that I get when I can’t remember how to eject a CD from the car stereo and said, “I have a bad feeling about this, Chewie,” I knew we were in the presence of true motion picture greatness.

Harrison Ford was even pretty . . . well, Harrison Ford in this latest movie. OK, his hair has quite a bit more gray in it, and his voice has gotten kind of Jim-Beam-with-beer-chasers gravelly, and it’s apparently getting a lot harder to make the stunt men look like a guy who is 66 years old. But he still has the whip.

I’m not entirely sure why this movie was so bad. I loved the first three Indiana Jones movies unconditionally, despite lines like, “Listen. Since I've met you I've nearly been incinerated, drowned, shot at, and chopped into fish bait. We're caught in the middle of something sinister here . . .”

In fact, I can watch and enjoy some incredibly silly movies. I’ve seen Young Frankenstein so many times that I can recite most of the dialog:

Dr. Frankenstein: “Frau Blucher?”

Horses: “Whinny!”

And it was actually pretty nice to see Karen Allen back as Indy’s love interest, reprising her Marion Ravenwood role from Raiders of the Lost Ark. I enjoyed a rare moment in motion picture history in which the leading lady does not look like the leading man’s granddaughter’s best friend.

The problem might be that Indy isn’t truly Indy any more. He used to be a middle-aged guy who could throw a punch like most middle-aged guys secretly believe they could if they really had to. He sort of stumbled through his life without any sort of long-range plan – which is really not all that unusual I guess, except most of us hardly ever have to whip up a spur-of-the-moment escape from Nazi Germany in a Zeppelin.

But I think what we all liked best about Indy was that he was always curious (and courageous) enough to grit his teeth, push that nasty old mostly-rotted corpse out of the way, and stick his hand into the spider hole.

Now we have a character on a motorcycle, who turns out to be Indy’s long-lost son and who barely adds up to a parody of Rebel Without A Cause, calling him “Gramps.” The main theme of the new movie seems to be that Gramps can still throw that punch. Except it turns out that every time Gramps took one in the chops, you could almost see the Polident flying through the air. This time Indy just didn’t work.

So when “Junior” (if you saw the flick, I’ll bet that you didn’t know, or care, that the kid’s name was supposed to be Mutt Williams) went Tarzan-swinging through the jungle while giant ants ate a bunch of the bad guys, I found myself hoping he would fall and go the way of those bad guys, just so we could get it over with.

Oh well, I guess that’s why they make air freshener. At least my sneakers didn’t stick to the floor.

Copyright ©2008 Michael Ball. Distributed exclusively by North Star Writers Group.

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