If you were a fan of the original "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and recall that horrible sinking feeling you got while watching "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom", then you should prepare yourself to travel back in time to 1985 and feel that vomitous disgust well back up in the pit of your stomach once again. This is the worst of the series by far and it's not just bad, it's embarrassing. Remember, George Lucas wrote the story. It's Jar Jar Binks bad.

Here's how I don't want to remember Indiana Jones: as some old, goofball archaeologist whose last moments in popular culture were standing in the middle of some ruin looking dumbfounded as the alien spaceship from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" spun around him in preparation for take off. I kid you fucking not. This movie has more stupid shit in it than the rest of the series put together.

First of all, the thing opens with the shot of a gopher. I thought - and I am not joking here - I thought I was watching the opening to "Caddyshack 3". I mean seriously, what has this series come to if Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have resorted to using CGI gophers in an "Indiana Jones" movie? Then, I don't know, about half way through the movie, Indy (Harrison Ford) finds this crystal skull and suddenly I thought I was watching "Alien". The crystal skull looks exactly like the head of one of those aliens. For holy fuck's sake, can somebody design an alien head that doesn't look exactly like the alien's head from "Alien"? Make the fucking thing square for all I care, just don't send up a firework that screams "we're too lazy to design an alien head that doesn't look like every other alien head we've ever seen."

And before I continue with my rant, let me just say that I get it. I get that Spielberg and Lucas (but mostly Lucas) want to make a 50's film and that the 50's films from their childhood were really influenced with the whole fascination with men from Mars. I get it. But god damnit, that's a different genre. I think that the original idea for this film - Lucas's script or story or whatever - was titled "Indiana Jones and the Stupid Space Alien" and both Spielberg and Harrison Ford rejected the idea. That's because it's stupid. And I also get the defense that the supernatural has been part of all the other Indiana Jones movies. Obviously, there's the Ark of the Covenant and all that silly hocus pocus, but it just seems totally different when suddenly Indy is looking at large-skulled space creatures and scratching the top of his head. It's just not right.

And is Indy so old that they can't give him a decent villain? I really wanted to watch Indy go out battling some anorexic Russian chick (Cate Blanchett). Then there's the story that's so painfully predictable it wasn't even worth telling. Mutt Williams (Shia LeBouf) shows up and asks for Indy's help saving his mother who, it turns out, is Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen). And of course, Mutt is Indy's son. It's such a pathetic story device that Marion reveals it to Indy in the middle of the movie (had she done it at the end it would have been even worse, but still...). Spielberg and Lucas paint themselves into this corner and it's like they just give up. It's depressing because it's so goddamn mediocre. There's nowhere for them to go.

Having just watched "National Treasure 2" I naturally read a few reviews here and there about it, calling it ridiculous and whatnot. I agree. The thing is, this movie is no different from that movie, except that "Indiana Jones" is beloved and "National Treasure" is not. Bottom line is they both suck just the same.