not very good.
You do not know how hard it is for me to say that, I wanted to like it so bad. I am still trying to convince myself that what I saw was a quality Indiana Jones movie. It had its moments but... sigh. More later when I collect my thoughts and stop cursing the name of George Lucas.
Updated:
I wrote that paragraph above at about 4:00 AM and now that I got some sleep I can share a few thoughts. I may have been a bit kind saying this movie is just "not very good", it teeters dangerously as "just plain bad". I was excited but my expectations were very low, there is a difference. Plus I saw this in one of the best environments possible, The Ziegfeld with 1500 fellow excited Indy fans. All I was hoping was The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was half as good as Temple of Doom or Last Crusade. Let's say on a scale of 1 to 10 that Raiders is a 10, Temple is a 7.5 and Last Crusade is a 7 (yes, I even like Temple of Doom!). Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is a solid 3.
I do not want to get too involved in explaining the plot but let me just say I really have no idea what this movie was about and major plot points just disappear, the story about the Crystal Skulls is just plain ludicrous. For those of you that want to argue by saying "is it any more ludicrous than three magic stones in India?" On the surface, no. But the three stones in Temple were such a small part of the story, Indy went after the stones because the Thugee clan was enslaving children. This is in contrast to Crystal Skull where those stupid Crystal Skulls have everything to do with the plot and they keep risking their lives for reasons I can not explain to you if I tried.
Another thing, Indiana Jones is a superhero now. In other words nothing can kill him, not even a fucking nuclear bomb going off about 100 yards away from him. If anyone thinks the scene in Temple is bad where he jumps out of an airplane on a life raft and survives, just wait. There are at least five things that happen to Indy in this movie that would kill anyone, and I am not just talking about examples as rudimentary as just the act of being punched in the face about 100 times, I mean situations that no human should survive (did I mention the fucking nuclear bomb going off?).
I truly believe Ford and Spielberg did the best could with this mess of a script. Lucas has been pushing this stupid idea of his since the early 1990's that Spielberg and Ford always hated. Well they both realized unless Lucas got his way this movie would never get made and relented. Do you realize a few years ago Lucas turned down Frank Darabont's script, he rejected Frank "Shawshank Redemption" Darabont's script for this turd?!?!?
Did I like anything? Yes. Harrison has not been this good in a movie in 15 years. He had some legitimately good scenes with Karen Allen as Marion. Shia was actually fine. The story is just crap and there is way to much CGI which is a surprise considering Spielberg swore there was hardly any.
Here is one last example, this is not a spoiler in any way. During the big chase scene through the jungle (you may have seen this in the trailer), Shia's character Mutt gets knocked off a vehicle by a branch and some vines. So what do you think happens next? Of course in about 10 seconds Mutt makes friends with a clan of monkeys in the tree and then proceeds to lead the monkeys, while swinging like Tarzan from vine to vine, in an attack on the Russian bad guys. Swinging from vine to vine! He caught up to vehicles traveling at high speeds by swinging from vine to vine leading a pack of monkeys. Do I need to repeat this sentence again?
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