‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ Screens at Reviews Are Not Good [Updated]

UPDATE: I didn’t expect reviews to be this bad. A 51 on Metacritic basically means it’s getting panned. It only has 13 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, but is 38% rotten so far …

I thought Disney taking this $300 million film to Cannes — more than five weeks before it is released in theaters — was a sign of confidence, but it turns out to have been a mistake. This will not replicate the success of last year’s sensational Cannes success of “Top Gun: Maverick”.

A particular review from THR’s David Rooney is quite the pan.

That nonstop pacing might sound ideal, but it’s mostly an exhausting slog [….] Part of what dims the enjoyment of this concluding chapter is just how glaringly fake so much of it looks. Ford is digitally — and convincingly — de-aged in an opening sequence that finds him back among the Nazis at the end of World War II […] This is a big, bombastic movie that goes through the motions but never finds much joy in the process, despite John Williams’ hard-working score continuously pushing our nostalgia buttons and trying to convince us we’re on a wild ride. Indy ignores the inevitable jokes about his age and proves he can still handle himself in a tight spot. But Ford often seems disengaged, as if he’s weighing up whether this will restore the tarnished luster to his iconic action hero or reveal that he’s past his expiration date. Both the actor and the audience get a raw deal with this empty exercise in brand redemption.

EARLIER: James Mangold’s ‘Indy 5’ is currently being projected at the Lumiere Theater here at Cannes.

This was one hard ticket to find. You also had to wear a mandatory tux to enter the room. I’ll be watching it instead very early tomorrow morning.

The reviews will start popping up, I would guess, around an hour from now. What should we expect? I have absolutely no idea.

I’ll be updating this post as the reviews trickle in …