Academic

I'm doing some catching up on family film blogging.  Hold on.

So,t he first weekend the movie was out, we left the baby with the sitter and took the two older ones to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  My 6 1/2 year-old had seen the poster at the movies months ago and begged to see it.  We Netflixed Raiders on the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade to make sure that he wouldn't freak out and that he could follow the premise.  (We didn't make him watch Temple of Doom because that's just child abuse.)  He seemed quite ok with the originals, so we made plans to see the fourth.

So, from a child's standpoint, both my kids would agree that Crystal Skull is at turns thrilling and horrifying.  The ants that consume humans was a little too much for them (and quite derivative of The Mummy, by the way).  On the big screen, this seemed way more scary to them then the face-melting Raiders scene, which still scares me. 

From the standpoint of those of us who were kids when Raiders was released, the movie is ok.  There are scenes that have that Indy spark to them, but the plot is fairly hokey.  The crystal skull belongs to one of a group of aliens who visited natives in the Americas long, long ago.  But the skull looks stupid.  It looks like it's made out of lucite with saran wrap stuffed inside.  It also seems to weigh about one pound.  For all the reasons that the ending in Raiders seemed really cool, the smiliar ending in Crystal Skull seems stupid.  And I still don't know what Cate Blanchett was thinking.