Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: Critic Reviews

At its best, it's a satisfying shuffle of the deck of famous Spielbergian moments that have gone before.

There's plenty of frantic energy in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, lots of noise and money too, but what's absent is any sense of rediscovery.

Despite the genuine excitement, and one blinding flash of the old genius, this new Indy film looks like it's going through the motions.

Even with the ponderous dialogue, there is considerable fun, and it's good to see that Indy, though slightly weary, still has the goods.

It's romantic manliness at its purest, almost but not quite schmaltz, ideally calculated to please true believers and ironic snorters at once.

A rollicking class reunion that stands as the second best entry in the venerable series.

Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is as joyless as its predecessors were blissful.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is entertaining, inventive and old-fashioned in the best way.

Sitting through Steven Spielberg's slog down memory lane means waiting for surprise, waiting for delight, waiting for daylight after turgid trudges through Peruvian caves, and waiting for an abstract story to coalesce.

It's not bad, exactly. It's not a desecration of the franchise. It's just . . . tired.

The fourth chapter of the Indiana Jones chronicles feels repetitive and a little gassed, but it has too much bravura filmmaking, and just enough wit, to not recommend.

Ultimately, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is instant artifact. It's a vessel with a great deal of pictorial images on its surface. But its contents are long gone.

The action is the movie's raison d'etre, of course, but the setups are wittier than the payoffs.

Crystal Skull isn't bad -- there are a few dazzling sequences, and a couple of good performances -- but the unprecedented blend of comedy and action that made the movies so much more fun than any other adventure series is mostly gone.

I can say that if you liked the other Indiana Jones movies, you will like this one, and that if you did not, there is no talking to you.

A lot of the picture veers uneasily between solemnity and slapstick and 47 different genres.

The character and plot contrivances are dumber than ever, but this is basically vaudeville, not narrative, and the thrills keep coming.

While the production values are top-notch, and the action artfully choreographed, in the end -- and quite well before the end -- a sense of tedium sets in.

The action sequences are staged and edited sloppily, a far cry from the death-defying stuntman extravaganzas of yore.

Satisfying if not fully electrifying, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull offers fans all the familiar elements: bullwhip, fedora, ancient texts, hidden clues, obscure maps and cliffhanging moment atop cliffhanging moment.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull plays heavily on the fondness of the audience for the first three films. Without that, it's basically a better-made version of the National Treasure series.

It's as contrived and convoluted as all the other Indiana Jones movies, but not as much fun.

Director Steven Spielberg and star Harrison Ford have no trouble getting back into the groove with a story and style very much in keeping with what has made the series so perennially popular.

On a satisfaction scale, it lands squarely between The Temple of Doom, and The Last Crusade.