The Real Curse of the Crystal Skull

Roger Ebert just gave it 3 and a half stars. Good enough for me.

I don’t always see eye to eye with him, but I think he is usually pretty accurate when reviewing pulpy adventure flicks.

This kind of makes me question Ebert’s view of what a good Indiana Jones movie would be:

What I want is goofy action–lots of it. I want man-eating ants, swordfights between two people balanced on the backs of speeding jeeps, subterranean caverns of gold, vicious femme fatales, plunges down three waterfalls in a row, and the explanation for flying saucers. And throw in lots of monkeys.

Umm. I bet he thought the third one was the greatest thing ever.

In my view the biggest problem with Ebert as a reviewer is that he loves camp. And he tends to think superhero films need camp. His complaint with the X-men films reduced to “not enough camp” and “why focus on Wolverine when I find some of the other characters more interesting.”

I really like him as a reviewer – more than most reviewers. But that “camp” blind spot means that there are some movies he loves that I know I’ll despise and movies I’ll love that he’ll hate because they play it straight rather than going campy.

So that comment about what he wanted in an Indiana Jones film really set off my red flags.