Indiana Jones is back! Why? We’re not sure. George Lucas obviously decided that he needed to dredge up another popular series (and hey, I kind of liked the prequels in a guilty way). But I should’ve known this would be a stinker. Stephen Spielberg’s last good movie was Minority Report…about a gazillion years ago (did you see War of the Worlds?).

I don’t do a lot of movie reviews. There are enough of them out there. But sometimes, when the movie is bad enough, or pisses me off…

This is spoiler free. Mind you, there’s not much to spoil here. But a couple of things:

– the character of Indiana Jones. They butchered him. They make references to him being a spy in the war. A spy? What? No, he wouldn’t be a spy. That’s not his style. A spy refers to pre-planning. Indy doesn’t pre-plan. He flies in, worries about the consequences after.

– Indy is a skeptic? A small thing, but it annoyed me. He saw the Arc melt eyeballs from sockets (though I guess technically, he didn’t see it, since his eyes were closed), he saw people wither and turn to dust from the Holy Grail, and he saw people with their beating hearts ripped out of their chest in the Temple of Doom. And he’s a skeptic?

– Marion Ravenwood. Remember her? One of the great all-time female characters. The way she was brought into the series — by first winning a drinking contest, then cracking Indy across the jaw…perfect. Feminine, but tough enough to take on anyone. Now she’s all ga-ga over Indy. Forgive and forget seems to be her motto. Even though in Raiders…okay, you see where I’m going.

– Alien men from Mars? Seriously?

– Indy is older than my dad. My dad has a hard time shoveling the walk now, let alone taking on the CCCP army. The first act was good because they played on his age. Made a few cracks about it, then simply dropped it and pretended that we didn’t notice that Indy is now older than dirt. I bet the Baby Boomers won’t mind…considering they’re all old now too.

– CGI…overuse of CGI. You know what I’m talking about. Indy had some suspect special effects (though impressive in the day) but by going completely to CGI, at some points it made me long for the old days of stop animation (okay, not that bad).

– ants. First movie: snakes. Second movie: bugs. Third movie: rats. They could’ve used leeches (okay, Stand By Me already used this), scorpions, fish-heads…honestly, many things. But ants? Ants that forms ladders with their bodies? Terrible.