Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull is easily the stupidest movie I've seen this year. I don't know what Lucas has about killing successful franchises. Characters repeat dialogue so they can be sure you heard it, plot points that are obvious to anyone but a developmentally retarded chinchilla are hammered in with the force of a pod racer driven by a six-year-old crashing into your childhood memories, and physics is applied quite, quite randomly. Oh. And there's a big CGI finish. Hope that doesn't spoil anything.
The one gripe I'd heard before was that Indy was a bit old to be doing that much twisty flippy stuff. I don't really see that--there was a fistfight that he should have been knocked flat in, but that's it. Indy was actually pretty appealing.
If you're a fan of the franchise, go see it, but do expect to drown your sorrows after. Personally, I didn't find this one to be particularly fun, there was so much suspension-of-disbelief-mangling.
It is just possible that I was the first person in Austin to get my set of 4th ed D&D books. I turned around and found myself at the head of the line at Dragon's Lair's release-o-thon at midnight, and the first person who's name they called (well, the only one, they got over the name-calling thing pretty quickly). The jury is still out--some of the changes are cool, but some are kewl.
