The First BBB Movie

Rating: 5/10 (11 April 2006)

As in "Big Budget B" Movie, the sort of visually spectacular, splendidly orchestrated live-action cartoon that Lucas & Spielberg pioneered separately and, on this occasion, together. In 1936 heartthrob college professor & graverobbing mercenary Indiana Jones (Ford, perhaps by way of Harold Robbins & Steve McQueen) is hired by the US Army to find & loot the original Hebrew Ark of the Covenant from its presumed hiding place in a lost Egyptian city before Hitler's SS/Gestapo/Afrika Korps/Kriegsmarine/Luftwaffe/Abwehr can get it. To do this he must first procure a critical icon from a girlfriend (Allen) that he dumped and who is now running Kathmandu's answer to Rick's Cafe Americain (there's no piano, but the wind whistles most soulfully). A two-minute reverse "Casablanca" interlude ends with another plot twist and plenty of enjoyable, stunning mayhem. Characters come & go in no particular order, including nebbish professor Brody (Elliott), Egyptian laborer Sallah (Rhys-Davies, who could give any Tonto or Dr. Watson a run for his money), tramp sea captain Katanga (Harris), rival mercenary Belloq (Freeman, who eventually comes across as French) and cartoonishly evil Nazis (Lacey, Kahler & Higgins, all perfectly cast). Ford holds the film together with a quintessentially American mix of determination, frustration, weariness & wonder. Allen brings a coarse feminism to the role of damsel tied to a set of railroad tracks. The film fails because its convoluted plot can never find even the tiniest ground in common sense, much less reality, with plot holes large enough for whole solar systems to nest comfortably. The largest of many large, of course, is that the hero's job is to rob other peoples of their cultural treasures and sell them for money. In a scene that desperately needed to be cut, Belloq actually points this out to Jones. Other giant leaps include Hitler's obsession with the occult (nonexistent), Germany's dominance in Egypt and the Mediterranean (never happened) and enough Biblical heresies to make Harry Potter look like the Pope. The charm of "Lost Horizons" (Jones flies over the same mountains at about the same time, but Shangri-La prefers Ronald Colman) and even "King Solomon's Mines" is replaced here by breathtaking action punctuated by Groucho-esq one-liners ("I'm making this up as I go along") and the obligatory juvenile, Spielberg gross-out scenes (Tarantino slices off body parts, Spielberg likes snakes, bugs & sharks). Still, Lucas & Spielberg are the masters of effective excess and "Raiders" is best enjoyed as a series of cartoon or "Lone Ranger" or "Perils of Pauline" adventures (the opening sequence is supposedly inspired by a Disney Ducks cartoon, anyway). Williams's music is as wonderful as any he's done and perhaps the best ever in an action film. The success of the franchise assured, here are some ideas for sequels: "Raiders of the Declaration of Independence," "Indiana Jones & George Washington's False Teeth," and "The Hunt for Lenin's Embalmed Remains."