KeithM
Posts: 862
Joined: 31/7/2008
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quote:
ORIGINAL: exandakane
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It wasn't a great film, and my reasoning may have people thinking I loved it - because that is far from the truth - but it is a far better film than some like to say it is. In short, arbitary critiques and hyperbole are cheap tactics levelled at an undeserved target.
It is a deserved target, I'm afraid, abitrary emotional attachments and defensive hyperbole notwithstanding.
*sorry to all those who have done this to death already - once more for the road*
The story itself was hokey (and not in a good way), telegraphed and full of plot holes. Never mind escapism - it breaks its own set of 'rules', established in the prior movies and pushed our willing suspension of disbelief too far - it nuked the fridge - and in doing so pushed the slightly comedic element of the franchise into the realms of farce. We're supposed to believe that Indy's indestructability was because he was good/resourseful/quick thinking/lucky not because he's a cartoon character who cannot be hurt. We lose that illusion, that subtle contract between film-maker and audience and the film is just people dressing up and acting silly.
The story didn't flow at all and jumped from set piece to exposition piece to set piece and back again, which gave the impression it was a case of 'right we need to get to this set piece next, how shall we do it?', with no sense of natural progression, instead of being a coherent, well worked out story.
Some of the characters were so badly handled that they could have been called The League of Expositionary Gentlemen (especially John the indestructablest old man ever Hurt who became a signpost for some explanationy stuff coming up).
Other performances ranged from the ok (Allen) to the embarassed (Ford) to the embarrassing (Blanchett). Vat vas zhe zinking? None of the leads were convincing in their roles (Allen being the best of the bunch) - all I saw were actors, acting. Badly. Never the characters they were supposed to be playing. There were moments when Ford almost had it again, but he just looked embarrassed most of the time. That was a bit heartbreaking to see, tbh. There didn't even seem to be any particular effort made to cover up the fact that the 'bad guys' fighting Ford were clearly holding back (because they might hurt him/he couldn't move quickly enough for them to even look like they were trying?), unless it was clearly a stunt double. Again, that was painful to watch and they really should have done something about it as it takes you out of the movie completely.
The plot elements were introduced and told so clumsily that I was expecting a twist of some kind at least, but no - early on they told us what was going to happen and happen it did. So why should we care? We know Ford, Allen and LeBoeuf were going to survive, we knew Blanchett was going to die/be cursed/getwhatshewishedforandregretit, the other characters weren't given enough development for us to give a damn about them and the story itself was so uninvolving that not even the 'journey' was enough to hold the interest. So the rest of the film was a long straight road down which we could see all the way to the end, and the movie duly followed it without deviation or passing any interesting scenery en route.
The set pieces themselves were predictable, uninispiring and lacked any sense of true peril or spectacle, with the CGI looking positively unconvincing a good many times and leaving the audience disconnected emotionally from what's happening on screen.or to the characters.
It's flawed on so many levels, in fact, that it's truly difficult for me to understand how any professional movie reviewer could fail to spot them and rate the movie anything except badly, matters of taste and opinion notwithstanding. If that movie was made by Anderson, Ratner, McG or any other 'journeyman' director, everyone would be calling for their heads. Am I wrong?
Many of these flaws are due to the awful script - in simple craft and professionalism terms alone, it should have been more coherent, logically consistent internally and just better developed. Inspired would have been nice, but half-way competent would have done.
Many of these problems are due to bad direction too - the director is supposed to get the best out of his actors, is in charge of the actual 'storytelling' and shapes the final product, so he is ultimately responsible for whether the film works, and with the best will in the world, it just doesn't. Yes, yes, in my opinion, of course. But if it did work, we wouldn't be having this conversation at all. Frankly, I expect better from someone like Spielberg, even with a bad script, if only in terms of craft, even if he's not inspired enough to throw his heart and soul into it. I completely acknowledge the man's talent and contribution to cinema, but this movie is not one of his better moments, it has to be said.
I have no problem with aliens. Bring it on. But where's the suspense, the awe, the sense of wonder, the thrill, the EMOTION? Nowhere to be seen in Indy IV, I'm afraid.
I didn't see the South Park episode until after I'd seen Indy IV, btw. I thought Stone & Parker went a bit easy on them tbh. 
< Message edited by KeithM -- 6/2/2009 5:41:27 AM >
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