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June 15, 2001 -

There's a widely-held misconception that filmmakers and studios are not aware how lousy their movies are. Fact of the matter is, many filmmakersdo know how lousy their movies are. Evidenced by:Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.

I first figuredLara Croft: Tomb Raider might arrive FUBAR when much of Austin's online media didn't receive word regarding advanced screenings of the film. When a movie blows, the Public Relations firms who handle these advanced screenings (for the studios) often try to prevent online "journalists"...like myself & fellow Austinite Harry Knowles ofAin't It Cool News...from reviewing a movie too early – due to Internet publications' near-instantaneous turnaround time (i.e. a review can be online an hour after someone see a movie). While online journalists weren't exactly shut-out of advance screenings ofLara Croft: Tomb Raider, Internet press in my neck of the woods had a tough time getting information about screenings of the film. And, if they eventually managed to find their way into a screening, they were promptly asked to sign an agreement not to review the film until its opening day (an effort to diminish negative word-of-mouth before the movie's Friday opening).

Then rampant rumors emerged, suggestingLara Croft: Tomb Raider director Simon West (Con-Air,The General's Daughter) was contemplating having his name/credit removed from the film after teams of editors (including editorial god Stuart Baird – who editedSuperman: The Movie and was employed to "fix" an apparently brokenMission: Impossible II shortly before its release) failed to resolveLC:TR's catastrophic narrative deficiencies. At the time of this posting, it's still unclear whether West will remove his name from the project.

The point being: yes, filmmakers oftendo know when their product is troubled. In this instance, they were right to be concerned about how people will receive their swirly turd of a movie. It's difficult to imagine howno one noted this movie's apocalyptic suckiness before it was too late to resolve such issues.Lara Croft: Tomb Raider's problems are rudimentary and fundamental – and represent a profound lack-of-vision & complete conceptual laziness which should have been evident from the outset. This is a simple case of garbage in, garbage out.

LC:TR ignores (or snubs) the most basic tenets of storytelling & filmmaking: why do people use flashlights in caves when the caves they're in are lit by close-to-daylight lighting? Why did an ancient civilization create gigantic stone warriors...designed to spring to life and kick the ass of anyone messing with their temple...if thesestone warriors can be taken down by karate chops (or a bullet) just like a human? Why did the same civilization break a stone key needed to control time into two pieces...and hide them on opposite ends of the Earth to prevent anyone from ever using/abusing said key...instead of pulverizing the key entirely so it could never be re-assembled and utilized? This civilization doesn't seem too smart – no wonder it's extinct. While ascending a Jules Verne-esque time shifting device, why does badguy after badguy get sliced-and-diced by its rotating arms – when all they had to do was pay attention to what was going on around them like the two people who manage to easily & successfully traverse the machine? Why do Eskimo sled dogs feel the need to attack an undulating, dimensional warping effect which is doing nothing to provoke them when, in reality, such a thing would scare the piss out of any self-respecting canine? Why is Lara Croft's house so atmospherically hazy/smoky a person could get lung damage just by looking at it? This film is ludicrous, and stupid in ways it did not need to be stupid. But its stupidity and missteps do not stop with such small details.

Boring characters doing boring things. (l-r) Angelina Jolie (whose lips hang open through most of the movie), Chris Barry, and Noah Taylor – waiting for something to happen inLara Croft: Tomb Raider.

But the film doesn't look cool.

Rarely has a film with so many exotic locations and extravagant sets looked so jarringly ugly and thoroughly unpleasant. Lara's mansion – which ispresumably lit to represent warmth, safety, and security – looks ugly, yellow, and jaundiced. The radaint greens of jungle settings appear washed out and muted:LC:TR's tropical (?) forestry looks malnoursihed and unhelathy – like people probably shouldn't be exposing themselves to such surroundings. The massive sets (whose physical movements and functionality are, admittedly, impressive) look cheap and lack solidity – like environments you'd see at a studio stunt show or tram tour. Establishing shots are shown in variants too similar to shots (the only way to photograph Lara's mansion was with repeated shots which crane-up over its front gates?).

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is as clumsy artistically/stylistically as it is conceptually and narratively. The film's hyper-kinetic action is uninvolving – rarely creating any "feel" or "energy" on-screen. Despite high-octane editing and plenty of dizzying camera moves, the movie fails to pull us in from moment one. There are a few occasions in which the film comes to life, which only accentuates the deficit of the material surrounding these rare and precious moments. The "bad guys" invade Lara's mansion...rappelling down through her atrium skylight while she is practicing bungee jumping in the same area. What follows, well, rocks hard. Lara uses her bungee equipment to bounce frantically through the atrium, like some kind of deadly monkey-from-hell – incapacitating or annihilating the invaders as they drop, bouncing from body to body, column to column like a possessed demon The action is dizzying, the imagery is solid, the kinetics are flowing, and the acrobatics are amazing – this is the only scene in which the film which genuinely comes to life. A follow-up sequence shortly thereafter features Lara taking-out a buncha goombas John Woo-style (motorcycle gymnastics, creative use of power tools, etc.) – it works well-enough, although some of the staging is incomprehensible, and the scene never rises to match the frenzied glory of Lara's atrium hijinx. But these sequences appear in the second quarter of the film – which means we have to wait a while to get to them, and have a frightfully long haul once the scenes have passed.

There is really no reason to seeLara Croft: Tomb Raider. What little works in the film isn't worth experiencing at the cost of enduring all that doesn't work. If gaming sycophants are determined to see this movie based on Angelina's Amazing Physics-defying Boobies alone, they'll probably get their money's worth of intriguing unnaturalness here. If you wanna see Angelina jump around? Some of Lara's gymnastics are pretty impressive, but ultimately they're only part of a disjointed & incongruous whole – and they go stale. If you're looking for a game-to-movie adaptation? If you didn't likeWing Commander orSuper Mario Brothers, you're not likely to enjoy this film much at all. As a tragic Ed Woodsian derailment,LC:TR isn't even as funny as those titles – nor does it possess the very fleeting (but rather smart) moments each of those films contained.

Or, if you've been over-bludgeoned by the hype & just can't shake out of a "Tomb Raider-kinda mood", go rent one of the games (if you don't own them already). God knows there's enough of them out there, and even if you've played them before, the games have a decided advantage over the film: it's cheaper to rent the games than to see the movie, and the game has an off switch just an arm's length away...

–Glen thinks you should go seeAtlantis instead...

The officialTomb Raider website can be accessedHERE.

Rating Info

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BringingLara Croft: Tomb Raider to Life
Star Angelina Jolie and producers Lawrence Gordon & Lloyd Levin discuss Lara Croft's journey from video game to the silver screen.