Did Indiana Jones Pull Out the Hancock?

You’ll recall earlier that I made a reference to “Pulling a Hancock” (which is the point when a good movie becomes bad…sort of like “Jump the Shark” when a good TV show becomes bad); someone commented that it was actually called “Nuke the Fridge” (a reference to when the latest Indiana Jones movie went from good to bad).

I was eager to see it for two reasons: one, because I enjoyed the first three movies, and two, I wanted to see if indeed did “Nuke the Fridge.” I finally had a chance to see it, and am ready to give my thoughts.

First things first, Indiana was bad, but nowhere near as bad as Hancock. It’s bad. At one point Shai LaBeouf was literally swinging through trees on vines; and the aliens in the plot had potential, but it just never carried through. The whole movie was full of bad clichés and even worse jokes. But let me stress—it’s not as bad as Hancock. Nor is that Nuke the Fridge scene where a good movie becomes bad—the movie is consistently bad.

Despite the silliness at times of the movie, I could actually see LaBeouf going on to make a whole spin-off of Indiana films, which, I’m sure, is exactly what Lucas and company is planning on.

Unlike Hancock, which outright angered me, I was perfectly fine with the cheesiness of Indiana; it’s a summer action flick—I want to enter the theater and be entertained, not enlightened. It had good action sequences, so I can’t complain that it didn’t do what I thought it should have. It just had an overall lameness that made it hard to come even close to the original movies, but it at least kept me entertained.

So I’m sticking with “Pulling a Hancock” on this one.