Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
  directed by Simon Wells
  starring Angelina Jolie

       When I was a kid, I'd play with my toys, good guys versus bad, and in the end I would create a mass destruction of my toys' universe, pretending they all blew up or died, their vehicles and buildings demolished.  I'm not a kid anymore, and I find  it ridiculous that I could ever be so immature and void of any creativity.  The sad thing is that there are many people that never grew out of this stage.  They are called Hollywood screenwriters, and they all believe that comedies must end in multiple weddings, dramas must end in multiple deaths, and action movies must end with sets exploding, imploding, or falling apart at the least.  Now even Shakespeare went along with these plotting structures, but then he isn't remembered after all these years for his stories.  Then again, I doubt people who write movies like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider want to be remembered for their stories either.  They'd much rather use their flaw to their advantage in attracting other childish geeks.
       Angelina Jolie, and her upstaging lips, plays Lara Croft, based on the videogame pin-up girl that has given so many geeks masturbation fodder.  She is a fitting actress because she too is supposedly "hot", or so it is said by another brand of geek that gets off on that sort of thing.  In the movie, which was written by screenwriters who are likely a combination of both brands of geek, Croft is after a mystical stone tablet that gives its possessor power over time, or in other words, time travel capability.  Except that the tablet only works ever 5,000 years, which doesn't really seem all that valuable.  Yet the Illuminati, who for some reason people still like to call a "secret society" yet they're familiar enough to allude to in a Hollywood script, want to get their hands on it for an unexplained purpose.  So, with no point really in achieving the difficult task of finding this tablet, the filmmakers just parade Jolie in skimpy outfits and showers and sweaty fight scenes, because, well, you know, she's "hot" and that's just what the geek demographic wants to see.
       There are some other scenes that violate the cinematic philosophy that all things in a film must serve a purpose, such as a battle with a robot used for training exercise, and an exhibit of something called "bungee ballet", basically more eye candy for the geeks.  Eventually the tablet is found, and the bad guys don't get their hands on it.  Not because Croft is this save-the-world heroine, but because she wants to use it for her own selfish reason in a near identical scene of disappointment to the one in Contact in which we see the effect of a few built-up hours of anticipation.  The only differerence being that Contact was a far better film, having said something interesting, and had a more original use of such anti-climax.  All we have here is an excuse for Jolie and her real-life father, Jon Voight, to be on camera together in order to say absolutely nothing.
       Then, all of a sudden, in true childish adventure film manner, the floor begins shaking and walls begin crumbling as the cast rushes out to safety.  I already saw the same situation this summer in The Mummy Returns and will probably get to see it again this year.  I wonder if Hollywood has thought about just handing scripts to children for rewrites.

One of many scenes where random men follow Angelia Jolie blindly into danger.  As you can see in this photograph, many of the men have a look of disappointment since Jolie, at this time, is wearing a butt-hiding overcoat.