Indiana Jones and The Ignorant Immigrant.

Last night, as part of my 35th birthday celebration festivities, my wife and I went to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. This movie was as good as The Last Crusade and Raiders of the Lost Ark, leaving me to wonder what were Spielberg and Lucas thinking when they made The Temple of Doom.

I was particularly impressed with the Russian spoken by the KGB agents and the Soviet soldiers in this movie. As a native speaker, I see a lot of movies where the Russian spoken by the characters is far from anything I even remotely recognize as Russian. In most cases, what supposed to be Russian turns out to be gibberish that happens to sound Russian without making any grammatical sense.

On the other hand, I found a few things a little unbelievable. My friend Carl warned me about two things that made him roll his eyes while watching this movie. They were the refrigerator and the monkeys. I had to agree with him about the refrigerator, but the monkeys I thought were just a cutesy break from the action. They were completely unnecessary, but not entirely awful.

My own list of things that made me roll my eyes is a little bit longer than Carl's. First, the English spoken by the KGB agents was quite bad, in reality these people were highly trained and spoke excellent English. Second, the sword worn by the female villain, Soviet officers did not wear swords, let alone rapiers, unless they were cavalry officers especially in 1957. Finally, the vehicles used by the Soviet soldiers did not remind me of those I was familiar with while growing up in the Soviet Union.

I was looking forward to seeing this movie since I didn't get a chance to see any other Indiana Jones movies in theaters. It was worth the price of admission and then some, the price of popcorn, on the other hand, was ridiculous. If you haven't seen the movie yet, I haven't given anything crucial away. And if you have seen it, you know exactly what I mean.