“Second Time Isn’t the Charm”

There’s an old saying: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” I’m ashamed to say, that for the second time, I fell for Tomb Raider’s alluring promise of a summer blockbuster that would thrill and entertain. The movie did neither.

The prize of great worth this time around is Pandora’s Box, which will reveal the origins of life on earth when opened. In a plot that mimics the other Raiders with Harrison Ford, but has none of the panache of that action/adventure classic, Lara Croft seeks an amber orb that will reveal the location of the mysterious “Cradle of Life,” the resting place of the mystical Pandora’s Box.

As the story would demand, the orb falls into the wrong hands, but Croft recovers it and kicks the villain into a pool of acid. The only twist: her new hunk decides he wants to open Pandora’s Box, and ultimately, Croft has to kill him to prevent the history of the universe from being tampered with; she resists the urge to open the box, something the fabled Pandora couldn’t. What a hero that Lara Croft is!

As mentioned earlier, the plot is so contrived, that the movie almost becomes a parody of itself, treating myth as fact and creating its own reality in the process. The action sequences were a bit blasé, even when compared to the original Tomb Raider, and most of the dialogue could have been delivered more expressively by cardboard stand-ups.

If there’s anything positive in the film, it’s that Croft’s outfits aren’t as skimpy and gratuitous as in the last film, and with the exception of a brief bedroom vignette, Tomb Raider is a fairly clean movie; if not a bit graphic at times.

So, now the question is, “Will there be another Tomb Raider, or will the franchise become just another archaeological oddity?”

Rating: 1 1/2

Tags: Action, Adventure, Fantasy