I was only a few minutes into the opening of Indy IV when a sinister feeling began to sneak up on me: this film isn't very good. As much as I wanted it to be good, as much as I avoided any reviews in hoping it to be good, it just wasn't. It wasn't good at the start, it wasn't good in the middle, and it wasn't good at the end. It's just not good. It's taken me all day to gather the strength to write down these words and, even now, I can barely bring myself to do more but the truth is the truth and the truth is this: Indy IV is a bad film. It's just plain bad.
I could go on and on about everything I disliked about this film but what's the point? This isn't a flawed masterpiece or even a solid film that touches the edge of greatness but doesn't cross over. It's bad. It's the sort of bad I didn't expect from Steven Spielberg and company. Great talent on both sides of the lens are wasted. At least the special effects are good (as if there was any way they weren't going to be).
The communist had it right: the Russians made a poor choice of villain. What puzzles me more is that, given the South American location of most of the action, why they didn't stick with the Nazis and use ODESSA as the enemy? If you can't get wartime Nazis, get war-crime Nazis. That's some free advice I would have given Spielberg if only he had asked. My advice for the rest of humanity (yes, I know that no one's asked): spare yourself from this film. It's made me want to go see Postal, just to burn this experience out of my mind. My eyes! The goggles do nothing!
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