"Burying Tomb Raider"
By Teddy Durgin
I'm not gonna mince words, folks. "Tomb Raider" is a failure on
all levels. Badly written, badly acted, terribly directed, the
movie is a failure of "Hudson Hawk" proportions. If I can do one
thing for my readers, I can save them the expense and the misery
of seeing this film. This isn't just a bad review, dear readers.
This is a warning. Stay away from this movie! Don't let your
kids nag you into seeing it. Don't let your girlfriend or
boyfriend. Don't even let your own personal curiosity get the
better of you. It is THAT bad!
If you want to waste eight bucks, here is a better strategy. Go
to the bank and take out eight $1 bills. Go to a public place on
a windy day. An open-air shopping center or a community park.
Either will do. Wait for a strong gust of wind and let fly the
George Washingtons. You will have loads more fun watching the
local citizens chase the cash in the breeze than you will
enduring "Tomb Raider."
"Tomb Raider" is based on the mega-popular video game of the same
name that features Lara Croft, a busty, butt-kicking babe who
loves going into abandoned temples and long-forgotten crypts and
swiping the artifacts buried inside. The producers of this movie
version have done one thing right. They found the right actress
to play Croft in Angelina Jolie. They even got her look right.
After that, they stopped caring.
Honestly, there is not one single character in "Tomb Raider" that
an audience can give a damn about. The heroine has one character
trait. She misses her rich archeologist daddy (Jon Voight ...
wink, wink), who was reported missing on an expedition in the
mid-1980s. Every scene involving the Croft character is either
her remembering her daddy, her pining for her daddy, her finding
something her daddy buried for her years earlier, her having
dreams of her daddy. It's all very disturbing. You just want to
shake the girl, tell her to get a life, make some friends, have a
pool party.
Unfortunately, without Croft's daddy complex, there wouldn't be
much of a movie. The plot of "Tomb Raider" is more disjointed
than a side-show freak's arm. The movie has all the subtlety of
firing live rounds off in your house. Actually, Lara Croft does
that at several points in the picture.
The central story is that a secret group called the Illuminati
has been waiting 5,000 years for the nine planets of our solar
system to align so they can use an ancient key to activate a
device that will enable them to control time. The problem is the
ancient culture who created this technology split the key in half
and buried it on opposite ends of the globe (actually Cambodia
and Siberia ... which really aren't on opposite ends of the
globe) so it would never fall into villainous hands. Why this
supposedly noble culture didn't just burn the key to prevent such
a catastrophe is never explored, of course.
Anyway, the Illuminati is made up of spectacularly boring
Englishmen, portrayed by a group of actors that director Simon
West must have pulled off the British dinner-theatre circuit.
They all talk in slow, hushed tones as if their every word has
cosmic importance. They love repeating the fact that if their
mission fails, they will have to wait "another 5,000 years."
That point is driven home on at least six different occasions.
The Illuminati employ a mercenary named Manfred Powell (Iain
Glen) to find the key pieces. This character has no depth, no
history, and no screen presence whatsoever. He is just a
sneering, one-note cad who wants only to get the key so he can
"play God." Again, it's a point he drives home in nearly every
scene he appears in.
Much harm should come to the people who made this film. Let's
start with the editor, Dallas S. Puett. In Puett's hands, "Tomb
Raider" has two speeds. Very slow and very fast. In the
dialogue scenes, the characters stand around and drone on and on
about playing God, finding daddy, and controlling time. Then,
they hop in cars, helicopters, motorcycles, jeeps, even dog sleds
and drive at ludicrous speeds to their destinations. Scenes of
the various characters traveling to the various locales make up
roughly a third of the film. When the action finally comes, much
of it is shot in slow motion or rapid-fire jump cuts. If you cut
the travel scenes and sped up the slow-mo sequences, the movie
would be roughly 45 minutes long. Mercifully, the whole chore is
kept to under 100 minutes.
Next on the firing line should be production designer Kirk M.
Petruccelli. He is the guy responsible for making the big sets
in this film. Remember a movie called "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
Remember when Indiana Jones raided the tomb in the beginning of
that film, then later the Well of the Souls. Remember how dirty
and dusty they were. Full of spiders, snakes, cobwebs, and
crust. The tombs in "Tomb Raider" look like redressed studio
soundstages. I've seen cardboard lobby displays with more
attention to detail than Petruccelli's creations.
A little violence should also be directed at the writing team
behind this disaster. Amazingly, no less than four people are
credited with coming up with the story. The screenwriters,
meanwhile, are Patrick Massett and John Zinman. Sixth-graders
could write better dialogue than these two duds, and the humor in
the film is as flat as can be. At one point, Lara Croft and her
dim-witted sidekick, Bryce (Noah Taylor) are traveling via
chopper to a remote location. Bryce's big funny line: "Hey,
Lara! My bum is asleep!" If the sound of the helicopter blades
wasn't so deafening on the Dolby Digital, you'd hear the crickets
chirping loud and clear.
I'll stop here. I have to. "Tomb Raider" represents big-budget
studio productions at their absolute worst. All action, all
mayhem, no character development, no plot, no genuine human
interest.
I know what some of you out there are thinking. But, Ted, I'm
going to go anyway just to see Angelina Jolie and those gigantic
breasts of hers! Yes, it's true, Jolie's breasts are the movie's
best visual effect. The film should have been called "Boob
Raider." Or, better yet, how about some truth in advertising. A
better title would have been: "Running in Slow-Mo With Breasts."
At one point, Jolie is reunited with her father in a dream
sequence. They reach out to each other (again in slow-mo). As
photographed, though, you don't know if Voight is looking to
clasp hands with his offspring or feel her up.
And let's be honest here. Jolie's breasts in this film are fake.
They're ridiculously fake. Insultingly fake. I don't care what
the video-game character looked like. Every scene Jolie appears
in, you can't help but stare at her rack. This is not a good
thing. Imagine if Spielberg and Lucas had forced Harrison Ford
to shove a bushel of tube socks down his pants so that every time
Indy ran, you'd be staring at a Johnson the size of Florida. It
would be distracting and ridiculous. If you want to see Lara
Croft's breasts jiggle, go to your local movie theater lobby and
shake the poster for this film. You'll get just as much
enjoyment.
"Tomb Raider" is rated PG-13 for action violence and some
sensuality. Stay away!
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