I have the fond memory that my father introduced me to two of my favorite films of all time. Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Empire Strikes Back.

I've always liked the Indy movies. I questioned Temple of Doom but I accepted it. The Last Crusade was better and made for a fitting end to a trilogy. I always rated the movies in this order; Raiders, Crusade and Temple.

Now, finally with the release of the latest fiasco they decided to name a Indiana Jones film, poor beaten up Temple is no longer last on my list.

In fact, in my opinion, its respectability went up a notch or two.

So, where to begin? I guess my first complaint would have to be that for some reason most of the film just looked and felt... fake. With Raiders, it always felt like you were really there watching the events as they unfolded before you. The people, the environments, the noises and animals. They were just REAL. You saw Indy sweaty, bruised, beaten, shot and it felt REAL. It had this gritty feel to it that made you think that those poor bastards actually camped out in the desert for weeks to shoot that movie.

Crystal Skull feels like it was shot in two locations: Spielberg's garage and Lucas' backyard. It just felt fake. I mean if you're going to mimic the 300 style of filming at least make it pretty. But Indy lives in the real world not a fantasy so they couldn't do that. Despite advances in technology, real actors interacting with a virtual environment will almost always feel fake. The new Star Wars trilogy makes my point.

Another complaint is that throughout the entire movie there is an extreme number of homages to other films.

First the movie starts out with the homage to American Graffiti with the fifties era cars racing on the street. Nice and all, but the only relevance to what I was there to actually watch was that Indy was in the trunk of one of the cars.

Turns out a group of Communists (Nazis are gone by this time, read a history book) wish to sneak into the US to steal a powerful artifact tucked away in a very clever hiding place. A warehouse in the open desert at a secret military base that has a sign warning not to enter the secret base. Well, after living in Vegas I can say with confidence that this is probably accurate. The military has signs all over the state of Nevada clearly stating they are not there but if you proceed any further you may be shot.

A side point. Recently the modern day Communists in Russia have suggested they believe this movie to be a documentary since they claim to have never sent in secret agents to infiltrate the secret base that everybody knew about. Go figure.

We learn that Indy was snatched up in Mexico and presumably the Commies snuck across the border to get to Nevada. Hey, I guess they didn't watch the border fifty years ago either. They want Indy because he supposedly inspected some type of box they wish to find. He doesn't know anything about the box but he knows that it's magnetic. So he helps them find the box.

Fans would have guessed at this point that this is probably the warehouse seen at the end of Raiders where the Ark of the Covenant is stored. It does make an appearance but by this time there's already been a couple of references to Raiders so you don't care when you get the glimpse of it. Did I say glimpse? The only way you could miss it is if you left the room for popcorn or the restroom. Blind people in the audience would have whispered, "The Ark must be on screen, the music and sound effects suggest so."

So the Commies get the box and we got glimpses of something in the box. Plus we're informed it's something to do with Roswell. So we finally get Spielberg's alien fetish in a film that should not have aliens in it. Things go downhill from here.

Oh yes, Cate Blanchett is the leader Commie and she likes swords. This will come into play later.

Indy gets away and finds himself in a strange little town in the middle of the desert. I know instantly what it is because I've seen the military films. Most people I've told about these events don't believe me because it's the dumbest thing you've ever heard of. In the fifties the government built small sections of a small town to the smallest detail and then set off a nuke nearby just to see what would happen. Any genius could have told you for fifty bucks that the town would no longer be there but millions of dollars had to be spent I suppose.

Indy survives by jumping into a lead-lined refrigerator that gets tossed a few miles away by the blast. If you are familiar in any way with what happens during a nuclear blast that is so close that you can see the bomb with the naked eye before it explodes then I am not required to explain the stupidity of this. If you are not, well then, in the real world this would have been the end of the movie.

So the Army scrubs Indy with magic soap that removes the radiation that would have melted your average guy so that he can then be accused of helping the Commies steal whatever it is they stole. By the way Indy still shows he had no idea what was in the box that he inspected. Apparently the government flew him in at great expense to inspect the box they built but not what they put in the box. We then learn that Indy had been a part of the OSS during WW2 (read another history book) by performing undercover spy missions.

I have to jump around here because this plot line really confused me. I could understand the US military recruiting Indy because two movies of the trilogy established that Hitler was a nut for artifacts. Indy had direct contact with the Nazis for that very reason on two occasions. It only makes sense. But later in the movie we learn he did undercover work in Berlin. IN BERLIN? Would the Germans not know who Dr. Jones was at that point? I would think they would be on the lookout for the guy that keeps directly interfering with their plans of global domination by means of religious artifacts. Hitler knew of him by NAME for Pete's sake! The Germans would have had a file an inch thick on the guy.

Indy gets fired from his teaching gig even though he's the best freaking archaeologist on Earth. As he's leaving town for a well-deserved break a kid on a motorcycle just happens to find him at the last minute by pure chance. The guy is a greaser which is funny to me since his hair is apparently held in place with hair spray and not grease. Anyway he's got a sad story about some bad people holding his mom and their friend captive. His mom says Indy will help because he's friends with the guy too.

At this point if you haven't guessed that this is his son then there's nothing to help you. Especially if you've seen Karen Allen in the previews and know who she is.

They have a chase scene on a motorcycle that's very familiar since elements of it are from Crusade. With Indy behaving like his dad and Mutt (that's what he calls himself) as Indy. It was... amusing.

They go on their adventure by taking the standard multiple airplane ride to South America. Along the way we learn that Mutt has taken along his beloved motorcycle and had been fretting over it the whole trip. And we never see the motorcycle again for the rest of the film.

Now begins the part where they look for clues to solve the puzzle they've been given. At this point we learn that Mutt is a loser that hates school but he learned nifty things like fencing. This continues the tradition of writers treating their audiences as if they are dumbest people on Earth. We have a bad lady that likes swords. We have a new hero that has trained in fencing. I smell a sword fight suddenly appearing at some point in the film.

They find dead people that have been missing for hundreds of years buried in a way that suggests they were not really missing. It's just the ones that performed the burial didn't bother to tell anybody about the crazy white men that appeared from the jungle carrying a freaking huge crystal skull. Oh yeah, the crystal skull is found and it is clearly a skull from one of those guys at the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Spielberg strikes again.

We get more blah mystical blah skull blah aliens blah take over the world blah stuff. Karen Allen makes her appearance and we learn she is in fact Mutt's mother. If you do not realize that Mutt is Indy's son AT THIS POINT then Forest Gump is smarter than you. Karen's appearance is another reference to Raiders as it involves a tent and her almost yelling out a creative cussing to the guy pushing her around.

There is a funny scene here where Indy and Marion are in quicksand, or whatever they call it, and Mutt goes out to get something to pull them out with. Turns out it's a snake and Indy hates snakes. He hates'em!

The adventure continues with the most fake jungle setting I've seen in a while, giant fake looking ants that the real actors kill in a most fake looking way, a chase through the fake looking jungle, the foreshadowed sword fight that only people who casually enjoy fiction could not see coming and extremely stupid/fake looking vine swinging. Screw it, this whole section of the movie that's supposed to be the climax of the film is just stupid. Go to the bathroom or something.

Everyone finally gets to the temple where the skull should be returned for a gift. Indy's friend double-crosses him for the second time in the same movie. I began to wonder if this is a fake Indy in the fake Indy movie because the real Indy would not have trusted him after the first double-cross. The skull is returned and we learn the aliens are inter-dimensional beings (with no explanation of how anyone could know this) who in the effort of giving their gift start attempting to kill everyone by destroying the temple.

The bad guys get what they deserve at the end and the good guys get away with nothing to prove of their adventure with aliens. We are left with a token quickie wedding ceremony so that fans should feel happy that Indy finally married Marion. There is a hint that Mutt may continue his father's adventures but if they make those movies then the destruction of the franchise shall be complete.

Random thoughts:

Karen Allen did not need to be in this movie in any way. Her presence was irrelevant to the story and in fact she did not even act like Marion from Raiders. She acted more like the ditzy blonde from Temple.

I always liked Spielberg's thing about continuing to use actors he likes but Shia LeBouf? Why? He was mighty unimpressive in this film.

Harrison did a decent job as Indy yet again. I just wish it was a better movie for the character.

Did I mention most of the movie looked fake?

The Humane Socity was probably not required on set because I'm not sure if there was one real animal in the whole movie.

For future reference, if you are driving a jeep and your son is in the back sword fighting with a crazy woman on the neighboring jeep suggest to the son that you hit the brakes and the son use the .50 caliber machine gun on the front of the jeep to shoot the crazy woman.

I read about the fake jungle scene in how they created the fake jungle with physics that react to the vehicles and actors as they travel through the fake jungle. This is funny to me because the real vehicles and actors are not in the virtual jungle environment so how did the fake jungle react to them? They still had to animate something. Plus they apparently didn't take all that hard work into the realistic fake jungle physics and apply it to the rest of the movie.

And finally, what's this kingdom that's referred in the title of the movie? Because if it was mentioned in the movie then I totally missed it.