Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Tonight we went to see the latest (and probably last) Indiana Jones movie. It felt like this is one of those films that you are obliged to go and see and so we went and did our duty. At the end of the day I reckoned that it was a proper Indiana Jones movie (but then again I watched some of the originals recently and formed the same opinion about them).

Much has been made made about the directors' determination to use "real" special effects rather than the inferior computer generated ones. This approach seems to have extended into making the CGI effects that they did use look rubbish, one or two sequences would have looked bad in a computer game. And some of the model work was so obviously a model that they didn't need to add a trademark camera wobble to give the game away as they panned over it. But they did.

And for a movie produced by seasoned professionals the continuity was very bad. I'm not very good at noticing things. Just ask number one wife after she has had her hair done. But even I spotted the way that the sauce bottles mysteriously stood themselves back up again in the diner scene.  All this served to detract a bit from the lush locations and expansive musical score.

At the end of the day, as I always say, "If you don't like what it says on the tin, don't open the tin". This was always going to be a big, dumb, action movie with one or two good set pieces. I don't think anyone has a right to ask for anything else. If that is what you want, you'll love it. Like I did.