Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is Good Enough

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull had its world premiere at Cannes at 1 PM May 18; the press anxiously streamed into the Lumiere early, afraid they would be shut out--and many were. Spielberg insisted on holding off so he could show the movie to the world's press all at once, which created additional pressure. Here's Tim Gray in video and in print.

But unlike The Da Vinci Code two years ago, the Cannes press were psyched to see it, whooping and whistling before the screening started. The movie unspooled without the usual Cannes logo. The first hour plays like gangbusters and is really fun. Harrison Ford has Indy down, even as a grizzled "gramps" dealing affectionately with Shia LaBeouf as a 50s greaser with a pompadour.

The answer to the question of whether Indy and Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) spawned a son is answered pretty early on and is just what you'd expect. As a femme viewer, I'd have liked more of the bicker-banter from the first installment. And the movie goes pretty much where you expect it to go--the ending is bombastic and pixilated, even if most of the fast-moving stunts are as live as Spielberg could make them. The film is directed with expert, Spielbergian precision and panache. All of the cast were fine, but I particularly enjoyed Ford and his fearsome nemesis, Cate Blanchett as a Elsa Klench Rosa Klebb-style Russian Colonel.

UPDATE: Many press left the movie early so that they could get into the press conference, where Spielberg said he was happy to come back to Cannes for the first time since E.T. in 1982, and that E.T. and Indy were the only films the fans kept asking him to do sequels to. He was the last one in, he admitted, after George Lucas and Harrison Ford, but only after the last script came in and made him see the movie that could be.

Indy 4 movie will do blockbuster boxoffice, and whatever critical brickbats are still to come, the media clapped and was polite at the press conference, which I live-streamed with a qik phone and should be somewhere on variety.com/cannes:

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Here's Todd McCarthy's review and Greencine's early reactions. UPDATE: Here's A.P. and Reuters.

Comments

[Sergio]

First hour - terrific and lots of fun (and I thought I was the only one to notice the Rosa Klebb - From Russia With Love - similarity with Blanchett's character with also a touch of Boris Badnedov's girlfriend Natasha Fatale)

BUT

At the halfway point, the film began to be too perfunctory and just "going through the motions". Too many unexplained motivations and one dimensional characters. The action sequences didn't rock me me like they should have and WAY too much CGI work despite Spielberg's claim that little was going to be used in the film. All in all for me a big disappointment. But it'll make a ton of money and watch it break the weekend B.O. records for any film in history

[patrick]

it seems like the recipe of a good Indiana Jones film would be 1 part Nazis and 1 part Biblical Artifact... the Soviet army does a pretty good job of replacing the Nazis, but the other ingredient...