RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) **1/2 Poster child for entertaining movies with a thin veneer of self importance. Tin-Tin, but with glitzy special effects and without the interesting characters. Somehow Steven Spielberg manages to spend two hours on the subject without shedding any light on, or even saying much of interest about, the legendary Ark of the Covenant. No matter, just because you're talking religion and mysticism doesn't mean you have to say anything of consequence or engage the intellect on a higher plane than fist-meets-face-yay!, it is, after all a defining characteristic of our culture. Lawrence Kasdan gives them a script full of witty and ironic twists and cliffhangers as steady as any Hardy Boys mystery, Spielberg keeps the film momentum revved up and things looking good in earth tones, and Harrison Ford is better than passable as the only slightly cartoonish package of academic machismo without a razor and his shirt half open. Karen Allen is the girl who desperately hadn't wanted to be left behind, she doesn't look as jaded as I thought she would but that's definitely her. Ford may be tough but he ain't no lover, he falls asleep after the first kiss and strategically leaves her tied up for the Nazis. No matter, she loves him anyway and things might have worked out for the best if it wasn't for those damn snakes. Suddenly, in the final scene, Spielberg does make a statement of some sort-it's not much, it's certainly nothing more than another allegory and it's clearly a bid for a constituency he thinks he can't ignore, but he's probably in a position to be on to something. Which is more than be said for a lot of the Ark subculture.
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