Lara Croft, Tomb Raider (2001) from Tuna and Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Tuna's comments in white:

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) is based on a popular video game, and stars Angelina Jolie in the title role. It is being released on DVD next Tuesday, and I predict that it will slowly climb from its current 5.5/10 rating at  IMDB. I don't know what people expected from a video game to film adaptation, but this is the best to date, mostly because of Angelina Jolie. 

Not only can she act, but she endured 4 months of vigorous preparation for the role, including physical training, kick boxing/street fighting,  firearms training, and bungee ballet. Jolie says she started the training in terrible shape, but got into it well enough that she did the vast majority of her own stunt work. Don't worry about the plot -- that isn't the point of this film. It is Indiana Jones meets James Bond, and is all about action.

Scoop's comments in yellow:

Let's get the bad stuff out of the way. 

Sure the plot is dumb. It's based on a video game, for heaven's sake. If you expected Cries and Whispers, you were deluded. These fantasy movies are always dumb. Go back and review the plot of Raiders of the Lost Ark and tell me that sucker followed all of Aristotle's Unities! The plot of Tomb Raiders involves a bunch of Illuminati who want to find the sacred Full Rizzuto, which will enable them to re-unite the separated pieces of the Holy Cow, and win mastery of all time, as written in the sacred Ish of ancient Kabbible. This is an opportunity that only occurs every 5,000 years, so you have to act fast before the Cosmic Offer expires, and the Dominance of Time returns to its regular price. The illuminati are a bunch of old white guys who plan to use the dominance of time for evil purposes involving a rising stock market, cognac, safaris, corporate golf outings, Republican fund raisers, and other stuff that evil old white guys like.

Angelina Jolie has to prevent the Evil Old White Guys from gaining their dominance of time, so she has to find the pieces of the Holy Cow before they can assemble the Full Rizzuto

You get the picture. This is the exact same plot set-up as about 500 other movies. OK, it is dumb, point granted. 

And a lot of the dialogue and detail do in fact come from those old grade-b movies from the 30's and 40's, in which somebody like Basil Rathbone tried to obtain the Full Rizzuto and somebody like Buster Crabbe tried to stop him.

Is the film as good as the very best action-adventure-fantasy films, like Raiders, or The Empire Strikes Back, or X-men, or Blade Runner? I don't know. I guess probably not.

But it is better than the next tier of popcorn epics. Think of it this way. IMDb viewers rate Return of the Jedi 8.0 (I suppose this is the most overrated film at IMDb), Phantom Menace 7.0, The World is Not Enough 6.5, and the first Mission Impossible 6.4. Tomb Raider is better than any of them, and better than either of those Mummy movies. Bigger, badder, more spectacular, more fun. The 85% bad reviews and the low IMDb ratings mystify me, although the guys we always cite (Ebert and Berardinelli) each liked it, and gave it three stars.

The filmmakers must have been astounded by the poor critical reception, because they must have thought they had another Raiders on their hands. Ignore those other critics. If you like this type of movie, this is a lot of dumb fun, and in terms of sheer visual dazzle, one of the most impressive movies I've ever seen. I suppose I wasn't the only one that was impressed. It did gross $131 million at the US box office.

Director Simon West's next project is a theatrical version of the legendary avant-garde TV series, The Prisoner, which is being produced by ol' Number Six himself, Patrick McGoohan.