Indiana Jones Nukes the Fridge

Though I have not seen (nor do I have any desire to see) the new Indiana Jones sequel, my 13-year-old son (who has seen the series in its entirety) tells me that it deserves each and every one of the bad reviews it has received. Indeed, according to the July 7/July 14 issue of Newsweek, a new phrase was coined only two days after the movie opened on May 22 that enunciates the extent of the movie's tanking. The phrase is "nuke the fridge" and it is comparable in movie lingo to television's "jump the shark." To refresh your memory, Happy Days, which was once a great television series, clearly went a season to long when it resorted to having the Fonz jump a shark on waterskis. Ever since then, the phrase "jump the shark" has been used to describe what happens when a popular television series runs an episode that causes the series to plummet into absurdity. And now we have a phrase that can be applied to a movie series that plummets into absurdity. "Nuke the fridge" is based on a scene in which Indy survives a nuclear blast by closing himself in a refrigerator. I always enjoyed the Indiana Jones movies and I am sad to hear that it has "nuked the fridge."