This Memorial Day weekend, I revisited one of my first PG-13 movies and finally saw a childhood classic that I somehow missed seeing while growing up.
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Although I have distinct memories of the dinner table scene (monkey brains!) in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, as well as the "walk of faith" Indy takes in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, I have no memories of the first in Indiana Jones series--Raiders of the Lost Ark. This oversight was remedied this weekend, when I had the chance to see a beautiful print of Raiders, complete with 5.1 surround sound.
Raiders is, in many ways, the perfect action-adventure movie. It's family-friendly, but still exciting and, at times, violent. The film combines history, mythology, and various eclectic locations (Nepal, Cairo, etc). Indiana Jones and his love interest, Marion Ravenwood, are well-rounded heroes--getting out of scrapes using strength, wit, intellect, drinking ability, weapons, and the ability to rely on and help each other. The film features something for everyone as well as something you don't see too often in action movies today: morality. While amoral anti-heroes are de rigueur in movies and television today (Walter White, anyone?), in Raiders of the Lost Ark, greed and evil are soundly punished (two words: face. melting.) while courage and perseverance are rewarded.Despite good guys/bad guys dichotomy, Raiders of the Lost Ark is far from being fuddy-duddy or simple. It's an old-fashioned film in the sense of being a throwback to exciting action films of the 30's and 40's, but it honors those films while still remaining a unique experience in its own right. That, and it's just plain fun. While the movie didn't freak me out the way Indy's escape from the disgusting bug-infested booby-trap did in Temple of Doom, I felt that I was not too old to appreciate Raiders of the Lost Ark with childlike excitement.
4 out of 5 stars
Jurassic Park
The same day I saw Raiders, I was able to revisit a movie that I vividly remember watching as a kid. Jurassic Park was one of the first PG-13 movies I saw and it scared the hell out of me--especially the infamous Raptor scene.
I watched Jurassic Park in a sold-out theatre at midnight and, damn, was it a great movie-going experience. Unlike Raiders, the theatre had a vintage (read: crappy) print of Jurassic Park that actually broke twice, abruptly stopping the film twice. Instead of reacting with annoyance and anger, the audience chatted and laughed until the movie came back on. There was a sense of camaraderie and fun. The audience cheered at T-Rex attacks and booed when one of the best lines in the film got cut short: when Samuel L. Jackson famously says at one point "Hold on to your butts!" A previous owner of the film decided to clip out "butts" for themselves, causing Jackson to say "Hold on to your...". Luckily, the audience was clued in beforehand, and was well prepared to yell out, in unison, "BUTTS!" to help Jackson complete his line.Surprisingly, I found myself still terrified at certain points during the movie: particularly during the first T-Rex attack--you know, the one where the T-Rex eats the guy while he's sitting on a toilet. Scary stuff. I was also surprised that the special effects still looked pretty fresh. Jurassic Park is almost 20 years old, but the dinosaurs still look very modern and realistic (as realistic as one could expect resurrected dinos to look). I still got a kick out of Jeff Goldblum's affected, cool guy performance. He reminded me a lot of Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark (or, well, as Robert Downey Jr. himself).
While I may not have been interested in revisiting Jurassic Park on my own tiny TV by myself, seeing it on the big screen with a group of enthusiastic midnight movie-goers was awesome and well worth it. My only two regrets are that I had to leave early (I was getting sleepy and was afraid of nodding off while driving) and that I did not get to hear Mr. Jackson say, loud and proud, "butts!"
4 out of 5 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment