Long story short, I thought it was great. Harrison Ford pulls off the “aging action hero” thing perfectly. Indy is a little rusty, but still just a likely to throw a punch as to recite obscure historical details from memory. Similarly, Shai LaBeouf, who I expected to find annoying, fills the role of “young punk turned into reluctant sidekick” really well. I’ve been reading all sorts of mixed reviews, and even the people I know were split pretty evenly down the middle between really liking it and being kind of unimpressed. My take on it is that Indy4 suffers from the same problem as the Star Wars prequels, in that some people have built the originals up in their minds to the point where no sequel could possibly satisfy them. If you’re one of those people, or if you’re expecting something radically different from the previous movies, you’ll probably be disappointed. But if you’re looking for more of what made the first movies great (straight action with little concern over the larger implications of the fantastic discoveries that Indy makes), you’ll walk out very happy, like me.
I'm a 30-year-old 
It sounds like you had a good time with your birthday movie. In anticipation of your “one paragraph review” that you do Rose and I came up with our own “one word review” of the movie since we were able to sneak away from the kids for one night.
The word is … Silly.
The CGI groundhogs should have been an indication but the scene that really encapsulates our view of the movie is the scene where Indie Jr. is swinging with the monkeys to catch up to the dueling jeeps which are themselves rather silly. Anywho, it’s your forum, not mine, glad you had fun old man!
June 4th, 2008 at 6:52 pm