fun, but not

Rating: 7/10 (13 November 2007)

This is one of the films that led me, slowly but surely, to loathe the work of George Lucas.
To be sure, it is not a bad film - in fact, it succeeds in generating the same kind of excitement as the B-movie/serial action films of the 1930s, the formula for which it is intended to resurrect. But it is that resurrection itself that annoys me, for two reasons.
First, Although the serials of the '30s were certainly a bit of daffy fun, they were just badly made. In order to enjoy them, one has to 'dumb down' quite a bit. In the early '70s revival of these films on the college circuit, this meant taking drugs before or during viewing. Without inebriates, it means adopting a child's perspective - and there is nothing wrong with that. The problem is, why insist on an expensive Hollywood production that requires the same 'dumbing down'? And do so in a manner so as to close off other, more mature approaches to the adventure film format? Secondly, the cultural references of the 1930s action B-movie were all outside of film itself - references to the political crises in Europe, to fears generated in the wake of the depression, to ennobling efforts to maintain American values against threats from within and without, to the rise of organized crime, to a developing technology no one fully understood at the time, and to increasing awareness of the strangeness of non-European cultures. A heady mix, and it's clear why Americans found the B-movie useful in sorting out and coping with so many different issues.
But the cultural references in "Raiders" are all to movies of the 1930s. In other words, there is NO world beyond the movie screen for Mr. Lucas. Even the myth of the 'Ark of the Covenant' has more to do with DeMille's "Ten Commandments" than it does with the Ark as described in the Bible, since it is clearly intended to work magic, which is about as much of religion as DeMille really understood. And let's not even discuss the hopelessly card-board Nazis here.
This 'dumbed down' inversion of cultural reference makes "Raiders" feel claustrophobic and regressive more than any other film mining the same ore I can think of. To be sure, Spielberg gives the film a professional gloss and a sense of action Lucas' other films lack. And both Harrison Ford and Karen Allen are truly delightful to watch.
So the film is certainly fun to watch - but it doesn't inspire any greater respect for writer-producer Lucas, one of the true con-men of modern cinema.