Lara Croft Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life Reviews
The less welcome news is that most of the same shortcomings that cramped the first installment are still dogging the sequel, which delivers on action but dawdles through downtime.
This Indiana Jones knockoff goes down smoothly enough, and Jolie isn't bad at all.
Time Out
Top CriticThe tepidly anticipated return of the videogame vixen belly-flopped on its US release, and it did so with a splat that could drown out several summer blockbusters' worth of car-crunch and detonations.
Scenery can't save this blindingly dull sequel.
| Original Score: 2/4
Jolie remains more magazine cover than actress (or movie star), and the franchise she supports is more Nintendo after-school time killer than rousing adventure cycle.
A highly enjoyable summer thrill ride.
Another sequel cashing in on its pre-sold audience without providing anything by way of sparkle, wit or originality.
For a movie based on a video game, the story is as far-fetched and the characters as one-dimensional as one might expect.
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| Original Score: 2/4
While there's compelling evidence that Angelina Jolie is a real person, you'd never guess it watching Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle Of Life.
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| Original Score: 2/5
More like a Cradle of Tedium, and despite the high-decibel sound and fury, you may wish you had brought a pillow.
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Without sacrificing velocity, de Bont gives us a clean, watchable film, with some exciting sequences.
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| Original Score: 2/4
She may be playing yet another (so-called) empowered woman in yet another film made for teenage boys, but you get the impression that Jolie is far too intimidating and too womanly to fit into their pathetic little fantasies.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Banal dialogue, ludicrous and uninspired plotting, dull but vicious fight scenes.
| Original Score: 2/4
The new film isn't very good, but it's possible to sit through it without holding your nose.
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| Original Score: C+
Despite extra scoops of action, Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life isn't nearly as much fun as the original.
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| Original Score: 2/4
A film as boring as its title is grammatically incorrect and long.
| Original Score: D-
Jolie may be defining herself in a franchise whose memory will be hard to erase later in her career, but she does it with the style of a legend.
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| Original Score: 3/4
As a collection of action sequences, The Cradle of Life couldn't be less rousing were it performed by the cast of Cocoon.
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| Original Score: 1/4
At least now we have a clue about what's in Pandora's Box: It's movies like this.
| Original Score: C-
How could something so expensive, so loud and so frenetic simultaneously be so mindnumbingly boring?
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
Uses imagination and exciting locations to give the movie the same kind of pulp adventure feeling we get from the Indiana Jones movies.
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| Original Score: 3/4
If ever there was a movie fit for permanent entombment, it's this sequel.
Cradle has more story and more Jolie but, at just under two hours, it unfolds like a leaden fashion shoot.
| Original Score: 1.5/4
This has less plot and worse acting than the 2001 original.
| Original Score: 1/5
Lara proclaims: 'Some things are not meant to be found.' I nodded quietly in my seat in agreement and then thought, 'Some movies are not meant to be seen, either.'
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| Original Score: 1/4
Probably enough goodwill has been built up in the early sections that most viewers will not take offense when the movie abandons its plot and characters.
Drags a 60-minute B-movie premise into something twice that long.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Inane claptrap that's sure to be forgotten in the time it takes to rattle off its elongated title.
| Original Score: 2/5
Lara Croft lopes from one action set-piece to the next without developing any real rhythm or drive.
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| Original Score: 2/5
A distinct if distinctly minor improvement on the first.
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| Original Score: 2/5
As impressive as Angelina Jolie's many physical feats may be, it takes even more stamina and fortitude to stay awake during the movie's seemingly endless two-hour running length.
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| Original Score: 1/4
Both Tomb Raiders suffer from rampant action-adventure cliches and the sort of lumbering dialogue that harks back to the Saturday morning serials of yore.
| Original Score: 2.5/4
After a while, you stop speculating how Croft will wriggle out of each fine mess and start checking your watch.
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| Original Score: 2/4
For every scene of National Geographic -grand photography and showy action stuntwork put together by chick-action veteran director Jan De Bont, a little bit of Jolie's old dangerousness goes missing.
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| Original Score: C+
