While the phrase “I’m getting to old for this” is never invoked verbatim, a few cracks are made by Harrison Ford’s Indy at the expense of his archaeologically-ready bones. Ford, Karen Allen, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, action films with a plot … they’re all showing the signs of age. But the homily at the center of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull doesn’t quite convert anyone because, well, if they’re not outraged by the previously analog series going full-on digital, they are apt to take note of how the tricks of the trade keep its participants and audience young at heart. If the majority are likely to fall more in line with the former attitude, it may be because the blockbuster demographic are still young enough to take their nostalgia (which is to say, the previous generation’s nostalgia) very seriously. Inconveniently for them, everyone else involved in the making of Skull seems wizened enough to admit that their nostalgia for the genre may have been temporarily blinding them to the serial format’s inherent disposability, reckless exposition and camp potential when they were kneeling before the phalanx of archangels back in 1981. They understand how formative exposure can make mountains of molehills. (Exception to the rule: Shia LaBeouf, whose overweening vitality is made to be the setup for the film’s final punchline — you’ll never hear an audience’s horror turn so swiftly to exhausted relief as you will the moment Indy’s trademark fedora changes hands.) Anyone with a rudimentary understanding of Los Alamos, the Cold War and Sputnik will recognize that Spielberg-Lucas have updated their format to reflect the popular tastes of the 1950s. The courtesy might not be quite as warmly extended by those who file Spielberg’s Close Encounters and E.T. under “prehistory.” But, as someone still young and impudent enough to whether this particular hard sell mightn’t be dovetailing off whatever cultural dearth sent Wild Hogs into the zeitgeist last year, I have to admit this is probably the smartest entry in the series. It might be a bit much to suggest that, after three films entirely dependent on the tactility of faith, Indiana Jones enters the Age of Paranoia in reflection of Spielberg’s apparent newfound spiritual relativism, but there’s definite meaning in the parallel set of bookending money shots — the first a low angle shot of Indy walking toward a blooming mushroom cloud, the second a high angle shot of Indy on the edge of a geographical and psychological precipice that holds long enough for Amazonian waters and mental clarity to come flooding back into the void. The matinee idol has been reduced to a gopher, but even gophers can dream paramount.

• Movie Reviews

Posted by Eric on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 at 11:27 pm.