Yahoo News Critics Have Their Say On Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, And They Really Cannot Agree
Indiana Jones 5 is set for release next month
More than 40 years after his first stint in Raiders Of The Lost Ark in 1981, Indiana Jones is back – but critics cannot agree on whether that is a good thing or not.
First reviews of the fifth film in the Harrison Ford-fronted franchise have been pretty scathing, after receiving its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival in France on Thursday.
The sequel – the first not to be directed by Steven Spielberg – follows 2008′s Indiana Jones And The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), and will mark the final appearance from the whip-wielding archaeologist.
There’s also a star turn from Fleabag’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge – who plays Indiana Jones’s goddaughter Helena Shaw, and while her and Harrison’s performances have been praised, critics are pretty split about the quality of the fifth and final Indiana Jones instalment.
Here’s what they have been saying...
Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Harrison Ford pose during a photocall at the Cannes Film Festival
The Telegraph (2 stars)
“It ultimately feels like a counterfeit of priceless treasure: the shape and the gleam of it might be superficially convincing for a bit, but the shabbier craftsmanship gets all the more glaring the longer you look.”
BBC Culture (2 stars)
“The jokes, the zest and the exuberance just aren’t there, so instead of a joyous send-off for our beloved hero, we get a depressing reminder of how much livelier his past adventures were.”
Empire (4 stars)
Indy’s final date with destiny has a barmy finale that might divide audiences — but if you join him for the ride, it feels like a fitting goodbye to cinema’s favourite grave-robber.
The Times (2 stars)
“The good news is that it’s not as poor as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The bad news is that it’s not much better... Even the screen talisman Phoebe Waller-Bridge — she of Fleabag — playing Indy’s cash-grabbing goddaughter, Helena, can do little to enliven a movie that wants to be both a thoughtful character study of an ageing archaeologist and a propulsive rerun of his past adventures, yet doesn’t quite do either.”
The Independent (3 stars)
“Tonally, the film wavers. It pulls in too many different directions at once. On the one hand, this is an exercise in affectionate nostalgia. On the other, like its predecessors, it’s an old-fashioned matinee adventure in which characterisation is deliberately broad. Certain episodes are knowing and ironic, while others seem painfully naive.”
The Guardian (3 stars)
“We all sat down to this movie hoping for a resurgence comparable to what JJ Abrams did with The Force Awakens, and if that didn’t exactly happen, it still gets up a storytelling gallop.”
Variety
“Time travel, in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, is really an unconscious metaphor, since it’s the movie that wants to go back in time, completing our love affair with the defining action-movie-star role of Harrison Ford. In the abstract, at least, it accomplishes that, right down to the emotional diagram of a touching finale, but only by reminding you that even if you re-stage the action ethos of the past, recapturing the thrill is much harder.”
Deadline
“However much action swirls on the surface of this kind of film, its foundations are built of reassuring nostalgia. Just hearing John Williams’ score, yet another variant on the heroics and theatrics of the original, makes anyone of a certain age feel that everything is momentarily right with the world.”
Watch the trailer for Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny below. The film hits UK cinemas on 30 June 2023.
