As summer really kicks into gear with the onset of June, here’s the lowdown on the season’s blockbusters so far:
Iron Man – I finally saw it last weekend and it’s a lot of fun. I went into it with neutral expectations, because as I’ve mentioned before, I’m not a big comic book movie fan after too many burnings over the past several years. So, IM was a pleasant surprise, full of eye-candy, decent humor, great effects, and a good cast. Confirming all the buzz, Bob Downey Jr. does a great job gettin’ his Iron on. Jeff Bridges is good as usual, and I even enjoyed Gwyneth Paltrow’s performance.
A minor issue is that you don’t really get to see Mr. Iron beating up on very many bad guys – a problem that seems to plague a lot of origin superhero movies. I’m also not really a fan of story devices that use big inexplicable power sources like the bright-light technology that keeps IM’s heart going. Then again, it’s a comic book movie, so it’s no big deal I guess.
Director Jon Favreau (remember D-Bob from one of the greatest movies of all-time, Rudy?!) is turning into quite the solid director. I bet we’re going to see a lot of quality, entertaining movies from him in the future. He found the right tone with Iron Man – a little serious mixed with plenty of tongue-in-cheek stuff – that most other superhero flicks don’t seem to find. Anywho, this was a good time at the theatre overall.
Grade: B+
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian – better than Narnia 1. The thing about Narnia movies is that I’m never going to be as big a fan of them as I am of Lord of the Rings. But, Caspian is still a fun movie and an improvement over the first outing. The startling, kind of humorous thing about it to me is that PC may actually have more slayings than any Disney movie in Disney history. Maybe even more than the PG-13 Pirates of the Caribbean! I mean, they’re all bloodless slayings, but they’re still slayings. And that little Reepicheep mouse guy? He’s all cute and furry and comic relief-y, but he slices up more bad guys than anyone without batting a mousy eyelid.
Director Andrew Adamson delivers a lot of pretty good goods here. I particularly enjoyed the lengthy, coolly shot sword fight between Peter and King Miraz. There’s also lots of fantastic location photography and mostly excellent effects. I do have one effects complaint: I don’t get why the horse-people can look so flawlessly realistic, but the mice and Aslan look so CGI. It’s a minor quibble, but I’m far from sold on CGI characters in live-action movies.
Caspian also has some interesting and well-executed Christian allegorical elements, which surprised me since I had read some quotes from the director downplaying that side of things. Overall, this is a decent blockbuster and a good kids movie, so I hope Disney continues the series.
Grade: B
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – two-thirds of a good movie. This is the problem when you wait nineteen years between sequels: it’s impossible to live up to expectations. Another problem with so much time between sequels is that I think you forget how to achieve the tone of the previous installments. The tone of the previous movies is what people want, so when they get CGI gophers and CGI monkeys swinging through CGI vines in a CGI jungle in pursuit of a CGI alien that makes Shyamalan’s Signs aliens look photo-realistic, there is inevitable letdown.
The thing is, Spielberg is a master moviemaker, so there’s still tons of fun to be had. And to be fair, the first two-thirds feel mostly like an Indy movie, with some appropriate 50s era updates. The first act is zippy and fun (CGI gophers aside), particularly the nuke test site, soda shop, and college scenes. But then we reach the jungle and find annoying, unnecessary Professor Forgetful-Mute (John Hurt), the completely wasted use of Karen Allen, plus those vine monkeys and basically the Indy flower wilts.
On the plus side, Shia TheBeef, I mean, LaBeouf, continues to be great. He’s going to be a huge movie star – a fact that makes my wife and I feel all cool and stuff because we saw his potential and were fans of his way back when he was starring in Disney Channel’s Even Stevens. Hmm, the fact that I just went from Indiana Jones to Even Stevens, says a lot about this movie. Overall, I’m disappointed, although it’s still way better than Temple of Doom. As a standalone movie, maybe Indy 4 is really good, but it’s impossible to judge it as a standalone when it has three previous movies casting giant shadows.
Grade: B-
So what do you think about this summer’s blockbusters so far?
