Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001)

Runtime: 100 minutes

Directed by: Simon West

Starring: Angelina Jolie, Jon Voight, Iain Glen, Noah Taylor, Daniel Craig

From: Paramount... and a few other companies

I finally saw this movie, yet I would have been better off never having seen a second of it: 

As the new movie is coming out in a few days, I figured I should finally see this movie. As I've never played any of the Tomb Raider games (I just never cared to) there was no reason for me to check this out when I am not a fan of Angelina Jolie in any way. I did go into this with an open mind; I did not want to see something I thought was going to be insufferable. Guess what, it was.

I know I was in trouble from the opening scene, which is some nonsense involving a robot that might as well be General Grevious. From there, this is pure crap... a preposterous story I don't give a damn about where I groaned when the identity of the villains was revealed, the object they are after is pure nonsense, and I don't like just about all of the characters, including Lara Croft. It reeks of “big budget moviemaking in 2001” in the worst of ways, and Tomb Raider is really damn stupid.

I could have rated this even lower but it was neat seeing Cambodia in a film as it's rare for any sort of movie from the West to film there, and Daniel Craig was fine if unmemorable, albeit him as an American was a little jarring and his accent was not great in terms of being accurate. However, as Croft in the movie always just looked bored and looked as if she was never challenged, so why should I care? What an awkward relationship with her screen dad, although it's more uncomfortable in real life considering it's her real life dad Jon Voight and their actual relationship is pretty bad. Also, this movie thinks its audience is so dumb that we needed to be told 3 times in a 5 minute span that the most important event in the movie “happens only once every 5,000 years.”

Many people say Cradle of Life is even worse, so seeing that is a giant NOPE from me. The new movie with Alicia Vikander has to be better than this offal, yet I am not sure how well it'll do at the box office. On the third of this month when I was at that marathon at a local AMC of 5 Best Picture nominees, during the breaks between films I sometimes was out in the hallway; they had up a poster for the new film and I overheard several different people make pejorative remarks about it and they all noted how much they loved the Jolie movies! Only now do I fully realize how preposterous those comments truly were, at least in my opinion.