Tomb Raider Cradle of Life Movie Review

Hi folks. It's Lily here. I'm back. You might remember me from the last review I wrote, which was of the original Tomb Raider , a fiasco on celluloid that left me with more questions than answers. I was young then, but I'm 2 1/2 now, and much the wiser for it. In fact, I'm wise enough to have completely skipped out on the viewing of Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life. Nope, I've never seen it.

So how can I write a review of a movie I've never seen, you ask? Well, watch and learn.

The Orb and the Love Interest

Heck, I won't keep you in suspense. Here's how I'm going to tackle this review:

I'm going to do it by measuring the trajectory of the clichés from the original Tomb Raider, calculating the standard deviation of the circumference of Big Lip's lips, adding it to the platitude of the purported "new" storyline, deriving the square root of the absurdity of the inevitable sequel, and multiplying it by the banality of the unimaginative minds that find the aforementioned tripe to be anything other than wholly preposterous.

This formula, my friends, will allow me to predict exactly what will happen in Cradle of Life without having to actually suffer through it. Skeptical? Well read on.

I predict that the following events will happen in Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life:

1) The movie will open with a completely irrelevant scene of a wedding reception in Greece that gets ruined by an earthquake.

2) Big Lip's lips will still be big.

3) Big Lips will use Microsoft Ancient Treasure Locator to find an underwater temple containing ancient treasures worth an incalculable fortune in modern-day wealth.

4) Five minutes after Big Lips finds the ancient treasure that has been lost for thousands of years, some bad guys will also find the ancient treasure that has been lost for thousands of years.

5) Big Lips will be injured and bleeding, but will elude capture by the bad guys and escape into the open sea with an orb, which is actually a PDA loaded with Microsoft Pandora's Box Locater XP.

6) Once Big Lips reaches the open sea, she will cut herself (in spite of the fact that she is already bleeding) in order to attract a Mediterranean Great White shark. When the 25-foot shark shows up, she will punch it in the face, and it will become so afraid of her that it will give her a ride to the surface so she won't hurt it anymore.

7) Big Lips will linger on the surface of the Mediterranean Ocean until an 800-foot submarine surfaces directly beneath her. On board the submarine will be a group of her friends & cohorts (she has friends and cohorts?).

The Bad Guy

8) Big Lips will spring a treasonous traitor from a Mongolian prison in order to serve as her trusted partner and love interest throughout the movie. This otherwise sound strategy will eventually backfire.

9) Big Lips and Love Interest will embark on a journey to recover Pandora's Box so the evil guy, a pharmaceutical executive, can't get to it first.

10) Big Lips and Love Interest will encounter and escape a long, long, long series of perilous near-misses with the bad guys, and barely make their escapes again, and again, and again in a number of varying, but monotonous fashions.

11) Big Lips, upon seeing that the pharmaceutical executive is about to escape in a helicopter, will pole vault from the top of a building to the hovering helicopter, landing safely by grabbing on to the rails of the copter as she is flying through the air. Yeah, right.

Sigh ...

12) After what feels like a sixteen-hour moron-athon, Big Lips and Love Interest will find Pandora's Box.

13) Love Interest will betray Big Lips at the big moment, so Big Lips will kill him. This will be after she kills the pharmaceutical executive, of course.

14) Big Lips will do the world a favor and make sure that only a tribe of backward, gullible, impoverished natives will ever know the true location of Pandora's Box.

15) The movie will end on a stupid, whimsical note that is supposed to be taken as humor.

16) There will be a sequel.

17) The sequel will be bad.

Lily W.

About the Author:

Lily is an advanced student of the cinematic arts, but she also has a wide array of non-cinematic interests. She loves jigsaw puzzles, toys, books, calculus, aeronautics, psychiatry, philosophy, and Chuck E. Cheese. She spends a good deal of time with her Mommy and Daddy, and travels north to spend time with her Nana when she gets a break in her lecture schedule.

Lily is a Full Professor of Mathematics at Cornell University, and won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2002. Later that year, she threw a no-hitter in Game 7 of the World Series, winning the championship for her beloved Detroit Tigers. A few months later in January of 2003, she quarterbacked the Detroit Lions to an overwhelming Super Bowl victory over the New York Giants.

The first toddler to be admitted to NASA's Space Program, Lily safely piloted the Apollo XXII to Saturn and back. "Houston, there is no life on Saturn", proclaimed Lily, "but I found some cool rocks, and I'm bringing them home."

After receiving the Oscar for Best Actress in a Leading Role, Lily was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor. For the moment, she is spending some quiet time at home while writing a series of adult's books.