Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life*

For the uninitiated, adventuress Lara Croft (Angelina Jolie) began life as a computer game character in the game that sports this franchise's title, "Tomb Raider." I never saw the first installment in this saga, but it would appear to me that she has evolved little from her humble origins.

In the opening of "Lara Croft, Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life," an earthquake disrupts a gala wedding ceremony for no apparent reason, other than so that we can get some kind of voyeuristic pleasure from watching the guests being assaulted by rocks and debris. Because the real purpose for the seismic kickoff is to reveal Alexander the Great's undersea vault, where he has hidden his most prized possessions. Among these is a golden globe that serves as the map for the mystical Pandora's box.

A crazed bio-chemical terrorist, Jonathan Reiss (Ciaran Hinds) wants the box, figuring that upon opening it, he can destroy the world, minus the three or four dozen people he wants to rule. We meet Jonathan on a jet plane, as he's meeting with a half dozen or so henchmen to plan his domination. Just like we've seen in just about every single James Bond film, one of the henchmen has betrayed Jon boy, and he poisons him with a nice dose of ebola. He dies in a particularly gruesome, gasping manner, and the rest of the henchmen disappear after the scene, never to be heard from again.

As a matter of fact, this sets the scene for countless rip-offs of the James Bond/Indiana Jones films, almost to the point of comedy. Almost every scene of this film reminds you of situations that you have seen countless times in better movies. Angelina Jolie pouts her way gamely through the meandering treasure hunt, but with the exception of one extremely skin-tight suit (think "nipple bulge"), there's very little to look at here.

"Speed" director Jan De Bont has his trademark action sequences hither and yon, but he seems to be content with proving that louder is better. It's not. There are NO surprises in this film, except in its audacity.

Early in the movie, Lara, bleeding in the leg, finds herself in the middle of the ocean, staring a clearly computer-generated shark in the face. He's been attracted by the blood, of course. Lara then punches said shark in the CGI snout. The shark does everything but roll his eyes, and she proceeds to ride the shark for about half a mile, after which she lets the beast go. Then she floats for several hours undisturbed in the water. Either the Croft genes are extremely fast-clotting, or there was only one shark in the quadrant.

Even Chris Barrie, the marvelous BBC character actor famous for the sci-fi comedy series "Red Dwarf" can't save this muddled, pedantic mess. Save your money. Save yourselves. Better yet, go see "Pirates of the Caribbean."

By Bill Wilson