Leaked reviews blast the latest Indy

Los Angeles, May 17 (DPA) If only Indy could use his whip on bad reviewers. Despite a military-like effort to keep "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull" under top-secret wraps until its Cannes opening, several underground reviews surfaced on the Internet this week, with one of them castigating the movie as "the Indiana movie that you were dreading".

That review was posted on the movie site aintitcoolnews.com by someone going under the moniker of ShogunMaster and claiming to be a theatre-owner who had been invited to an advanced screening.

The reviewer said the movie suffers from predictable plot points and cheesy special effects, from a lack of tension, a jungle that looks like it is made of plastic and tired jokes about the advanced age of leading man Harrison Ford.

"During the whole of the movie, there was not a single moment that I thought our hero Jones was in any sort of peril or even significant inconvenience," wrote ShogunMaster. "In most cases, you were so many steps ahead of the characters that it was really just an arduous wait for them to get through it."

In one chase sequence, ShogunMaster complained: "The jungle chase in the duck amphibious vehicles looks like the whole jungle was made of plastic."

Another reviewer complained that the movie was too self-referential.

"Everyone's just treading water in this thing. It's all about trying to recapture lightning in a bottle. Nothing about this film stands on its own - it's constantly leaning on the past, hoping we don't notice that it doesn't bring anything new to the franchise," the reviewer wrote.

"It sounds like I hated it. I really didn't. But I have to admit it made me sad. It felt like going to a family reunion where everyone was forced to watch a slideshow or old home movies instead of getting a chance to catch up with each other."

A third reviewer however pronounced the "Crystal Skull" better than the widely admired third film, "The Last Crusade".

"A book should be written on the numerous ways and reasons this series just blows every other attempt at adventure films out of the croc-infested water," the review says. "It will bring broad goofy smiles to your faces."

Bad reviews are unlikely to have much of an impact on the film's blockbuster prospects. Nor does George Lucas seem to care too much.

"I know the critics are going to hate it," he said in a recent interview. "The fans are all upset. They're always going to be upset. So you just have to stand by for the bricks and the custard pies, because they're going to come flying your way."

Click the Movie button below for more info:
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull