Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Review

First, I will do my best to keep this review spoiler free.

I grew up an Indiana Jones fan and again watched the first three before I saw this movie. As a kid Indiana Jones encouraged fearlessness in suburbia and led to me attempting stupid things from diving under a garage door closing at the last second to jumping off a second story roof. These things led to some broken bones but overall I always felt that what was done in the first three movies was barely realistic. Each stunt could be done but required a correct alignment of the stars.

I really enjoyed this movie and in the spirit of the old movies, there was some unknown power at work behind the quest. My primary issue with this movie began about 75 minutes into it as things went from barely realistic to entirely unrealistic. Indiana and three others survive multiple water falls, something that I would categorize as wholly unrealistic, right after another unrealistic jungle action scene. This left my friends and I stunned at how blatantly unrealistic this part of the movie was. We struggled to think of similar actions in previous Indiana Jones, but failed. And, were it not for this 15 minutes of the movie, I would have rated this movie 5 stars.

Beyond this 15 minutes, the movie was the normal Indiana Jones exciting and puzzle solving sort of expedition while a competing party tries to obtain the prize to use for evil at the same time ala the Last Crusade. The movie is worth seeing but if you were a traditional Indiana Jones fan, be prepared to be disappointed in the middle.

As a final statement, I don't think I will be signing up to see a Mud movie. You might understand after seeing the whole movie.