The real question that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull poses is not "Will it be disappointing?" but rather "How disappointing will it be?" My answer: Not that disappointing.
Steven Spielberg is a consummate craftsman and his sure hand guides this thrilling throwback (that's thrilling by non-Indy standards, mind you). Although, I'm not sure if it's still a throwback to the adventure serials of the 30s and 40s or if it's been long enough since the last film for this to be a throwback to the Indiana Jones films of the 80s. The film is full of references to the earlier films and it even managed to slip in at least one nod to the Star Wars series (Harrison Ford gets a "bad feeling about this" at one point).
Speaking of Star Wars, I know that plenty of people will tell you that thins movie sucked and blah, blah, blah, but I want to make it clear that is nowhere near as bad as the recent Star Wars movies and that it in no way raped my childhood. I think that's an important distinction to make.
The film deftly handles the update from the 40s to the 50s. The commies are a natural substitute for Nazis and although it took me a little while to get used to the aliens, I appreciate how they went all-out with the b-movie/sci-fi thing. I mean, it's just so 50s.
I also learned an important lesson: Not even the all-star English trio of John Hurt, Jim Broadbent, and Ray Winstone can make up for John Rhys-Davies. Do you think he couldn't make this film because he was busy working on Anaconda 3 . . . or Anaconda 4?
It was nice seeing Karen Allen again but she seemed a little too happy to be working again.
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