I can't BELIEVE that anyone would think that this one is the best.

Rating: 7/10 (28 February 2000)

I mean, there are people who think that `Raiders of the Lost Ark' is Spielberg's best film. I'm not saying I agree with them - I don't - but I can see how such a case would be made. Could anyone reasonably make this claim of the third Indianna Jones? Hah! The idea is absurd.
The first two films have a single narrative thread. Their before-the-credits establishing scene really does establish something (and both scenes are very well staged, unlike the analogous scene here); and thereafter it is one SINGLE roller-coaster ride (almost literally, in the second movie). Here we have a series of merry-go-round spins. I'm not saying that this doesn't have its moments. It does, and I enjoyed them. But they've been stitched together in the most unconvincing fashion. This means that when a scene falls flat - and be honest, it DOES happen - it REALLY falls flat.
Furthermore, the music isn't quite as good the third time around. Nor were the settings. It's incredible that a paid scout searched all of Europe and came up with locations as drab as these. I've already mentioned that the script was weaker than before. But this is all tolerable; what REALLY lets the film down is the concluding sequence in that temple place. I've seen game shows that had more class. Some think that the inspiration for the series of inane riddles Indy must solve did indeed come from some tacky game show; but I know better. I'm willing to bet that either George Lucas or Jeffrey Boam was once a dungeon master, used to leading characters like rats through a maze in precisely this fashion, with precisely this set of contrived puzzles and silly booby traps. The cheesy fake rocks and fairy-floss cobwebs set it all off perfectly.
And another thing: Indianna Jones is beginning to look like a bit of a dill. This is the third time he's started out sure that a fabled artefact wasn't really magical, only to find out that it was, after all. (I don't know how many times this pattern repeats itself in the television specials. I have more sense than to watch them.) Doesn't he learn from experience?
The third Indy film still puts up a good show, don't get me wrong, but it can't compete with its predecessors. Spielberg and Lucas should quit while they're still ahead.
Sorry. I forgot those television specials again, and the proposed fourth movie ... should HAVE quit while they WERE still ahead.