Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
It's hard to be critical of something that isn't really there, as is the case with Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, the latest videogame turned motion picture, but I'll try to do it without going on and on about Angelina Jolie's lips and breasts, which are the only things that really show up on the screen at all.
Thanks to legions of post-pubescent teens, college dorm shut-ins, and the slovenly (and dateless) 20- and 30-something professionals they're destined to become, Tomb Raider has become the most popular videogame of all time by allowing these forlorn young boys and men to control the fate of Lara Croft, an English archaeologist/adventurer with measurements that would make Barbie blush. Unfortunately for moviegoers, the celluloid version is every bit as two-dimensional as the software version—except for Angelina Jolie's lips and breasts, of course. Damn. I said I'd try. Sorry.
If memory serves me correctly (yes, I did play the game once when it was released in 1996), the videogame's plot involved Lara Croft finding the various pieces of some ancient artifact which, when assembled, did... something. I can't remember exactly. As for the movie's plot, which was much thinner than Angelina Jolie's lips, Lara Croft must find the pieces to an ancient artifact which, when assembled, can control... time, or something. Eh, that sounds right, more or less. I promise I really did see this movie. I remember sitting in a theater anyway. I'm certain of that.
Whatever it was, director Simon West (who should have been exiled from this business after Con Air) and his Quintumvirate of screenwriters obviously didn't understand it either. The film makes so little sense at times that basic storytelling logic seems to implode on itself, creating a black hole of apathy in the movie theater. The only thing to do is throw up your hands and hope they brush against Angelina Jolie's breasts, which at times seemed to be literally protruding off the screen.
At any rate, Croft races across the globe to try and beat token villain Manfred Powell (Iain Glen) to the various pieces of the artifact before the evil group he belongs to (the Illuminati, who are something like Masons?—it was hard to pay attention) assemble it and use time travel for their own evil gain. If only they could have used it to take us all back in time and figure out why the hell she married Billy Bob Thornton. Or better yet, back to when I bought my ticket.
Tomb Raider is so vapid and empty it sets back the cause of female heroism in films more than 20 years. While Jolie effectively shoots her way through the role of a videogame character, Lara Croft has no relationship to the benchmark for female action heroines in film—Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) in Alien and its sequels. Croft can't even measure up to the anemic characters played by Geena Davis in Cutthroat Island and The Long Kiss Goodnight. (Insert your own "measure up" joke here.)
Even fans of the videogame deserved better than this sinkhole of time. Go to this film and let Angelina Jolie kiss 100 minutes of your life goodbye with those luscious lips of hers, because even the best upper-body efforts of a certain leading lady couldn't make Tomb Raider a full, firm movie-going experience. It just goes limp.