LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER: THE CRADLE OF LIFE

Rating: zero

When the production notes for a non-period film spend more than a paragraph on the costume design, you can be reasonably sure that the creative focus of the project was not optimally aimed at a stellar piece of filmmaking. Hence we learn that the fabric Angelina Jolie’s silver diving ensemble comes from Japan, because that looked better underwater. Given that there is a finite amount of time and money to be spent on even the most bloated of overproduced films, something, as they say, has to give and, as is usually the case, it is was script that goes begging. And thus is it with LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER: THE CRADLE OF LIFE, a franchise whose titles get longer as the quality of the finished product diminishes geometrically.  
 Jolie is back, once again essaying the role of Lara Croft, an archeologist and adventurer with more money than God and a knack for trouble. The team behind the cameras has changed. This time out the team of writers includes Steven E. de Souza, who penned JUDGE DREDD and HUDSON HAWK. The new director is Jan de Bont of SPEED fame. He tries to keep things moving, but with a story that is remarkable for its predictability, there’s really nothing to do but blow things up when he can.  Fortunately, whenever Lara Croft is involved, it’s just a matter of time before that sort of thing happens. It’s also true that she always needs to be somewhere far, far away from where she finds herself at any given moment. So instead of a story, we get lots of pretty pictures of spectacular international locales (Africa, Hong Kong, Greece) in which Jolie as Croft snarls, tussles, defies gravity, and even punches out a shark as she once again saves the world.
She can’t, alas, save this film.
The plot has everyone chasing a sparkly orb that will lead to Pandora’s Box and a plague that will wipe out the planet. There is, of course, a mad scientist (Ciaran Hinds) who plans to create an anti-serum so that he can selectively and lucratively wipe out that portion of humanity that gets on his nerves (that would be most of it). How he plans to do that without succumbing to the plague himself is one of those details with which the writers couldn’t be bothered to explain. Add an old flame (Gerard Butler) who’s also a very nasty mercenary, some less than thrillingly choreographed action sequences and you get a story that plods along with dialogue that blazes new trails in banality. Things like “The orb isn’t here” as the camera shows an empty box, or Laura exclaiming that this will be the biggest discovery since the Pyramids. Perhaps this crack archeologist overslept the day her archeology 101 class discussed how they’ve been looming over the sands of Egypt where everyone can and has seen them for at least 4000 years. At least Jolie looks good in the silver diving ensemble, and the sandy cream and pinkish-beige silk bomber jacket about which the notes wax rhapsodic.
And perhaps that is the whole point. Perhaps we’re not meant to pay attention to a silly plot, bland performances, or special effects that are just going through the motions. Perhaps we should only be looking at the wardrobe. On that level, LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER: THE CRADLE OF LIFE rises to a middling level of mediocrity. And that’s the best thing I can find to say about it.