Cinefantastique Online

The Age.com.au has a report on INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL, which had its premier at the Cannes film festival. Their response is not as negative as some have been, but they do seem to think the film is a bit of a disappointment:

 The new film is – largely – more of the old films, but with more stars, bigger stunts and considerably more computer-generated imagery.

Led by Indy and Mary, his first love from Raiders of the Lost Ark- again played by an impressively mature (in Hollywood terms) Karen Allen – our gang of adventurers plunge down a series of massive waterfalls, fight gargantuan creepy-crawlies, find ways into Mayan tombs that have beaten generations of determined but less wily tomb-raiders, find treasure and beat off some spectacularly evil bad dudes, led by Cate Blanchett as a Soviet scientist with an accent thicker than borscht and a neat sideline in swordplay.

[...]

There were only sporadic cheers from diehards at the end of the film; it was not, as one early reviewer had said, the Indiana Jones film everyone had been dreading, but it wasn’t an ecstatic experience either, even for the movie geeks.

Perhaps it never could be. Digging around the old franchise is just a little too much like archaeology.