Great for 12 year old boys

Rating: Null/10 (1 May 2016)

I was twelve when I first watched this and it wowed me. It helped that I knew nothing about it going in, and had no expectations(I'd been going to see 'Clash of the Titans' but there were no seats so opted for this instead. Adored it then, entertained though mildly irritated by it now. It is not an adult film and should not be seen by adults who remember it fondly. The joins in the plot show far more, the setting up of 'memorable' moments calculated to make an audience respond like children in a sideshow - i.e use of spiders and snakes, a jeckyll and hyde hero (teacher turned adventurer) bumbling Nazis. It is a super hero film pure and simple, with mild humor - it needed more of this, which the second film remedied - and not very original shocks. Of course it is made with the full force of the Hollywood film industry behind it (imagine a Goliath holding up an ant)and Spielberg stages the action scenes very well. But the whole mumbo jumbo story coupled with the embarrassing music, starts to grate. There are some fringe benefits for the oldies: John Rhys Davies' booming voice, Karen Allen's scene with the French baddie - she obviously prefers him to Indy who forgets her in seconds when he's 'digging' or whatever. The gleaming photography of desert landscapes and middle eastern towns is evocative, though in some ways too good for the material - it evokes more emotion than the plot or the actors, whose only real emotions are made of of grunts and shrieks. This is partly why the comedy doesn't totally work - the photography undermines it. Still the whole thing is fine if you're about to sprout your first pimple, but you wish they spent this much effort and talent on something that resonated more and not comic books. This is one of the films that kicked off the whole superhero mania that still crowds out anything more 'thoughtful' these days.