It's just an average movie.

Rating: 4/10 (16 January 2008)

About a couple of years back I started renting movies from IMDb top 250 and ROLA certainly doesn't belong there. It's just an average movie with a thin plot and some comic element thrown here and there. I'm not a big James Bond fan, but this is still nowhere near James Bond movies. The hero practically does nothing in the movie except chasing around treasures and losing them to people. He started with the golden thing in the beginning and lost it to Belloq. He couldn't save the girl from the blast in the truck and yet she is falling for him. He discovered the ark but lost it to the Nazis, tried to gain it back in a lame chase sequence but all in vain because .... guess what ... he lost it to the Nazis again. The Germans after recapturing it, opened it up out of curiosity only to be killed by the powers within the ark. All this while our Mr. Indiana Jones and his girlfriend were tied to a pole avoiding "looking" at anything that happened.
Apart from finding the ark Mr. Jones had no major role to play in the entire movie other than the fact that it had to last for two hours. And being a prominent historian he was helped by some local guy to solve the mystery of the location of the ark by reading stuff off a medallion. Not to mention, he was about to eat a poisoned 'date' only to be saved by Sallah. So the only powers our great Mr. Jones had include - a sense of timing, dressing up in a rugged style (including a beard which he grew all of a sudden even though he landed in Nepal clean shaved) and a funny bone which popped up occasionally but far too spread out.
The only positive part of the movie was its opening which was strong but then they lost it.
Sure it paved ways for future adventure movies and it was one of its kind, but it was plain average.