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"Fortune and glory," goals of Bwana Messiahs and imperialist toymakers alike. One gong banged after another, Sternberg multiplied by Berkeley at the "Club Obi Wan," musical number into melee into car chase. "What are you supposed to be, a lion tamer?" No pauses allowed in theme parks, the leap off the plane becomes a slide down Himalayan slopes then a sail through Indian rapids. Barely recovering from poison, the eponymous adventurer (Harrison Ford) finds himself saddled with screeching showgirl (Kate Capshaw) and squealing sidekick (Ke Huy Quan) in the search for sacred stones. "Hang on, lady, we going for a ride." Steven Spielberg and George Lucas in dark moods, meaning the viscous Id gets to ooze revealingly through shiny blockbuster surfaces. Shanghai gangsters to Thuggee cultists, the unrelenting orientalism builds to a pagan altar with a swirling lava center under a child Maharajah's palace. (Subterranean canals are accessed through the heroine's boudoir, the nude statue hiding the portal is fondled following a bit of "adult" repartee.) The juvenilia of Raiders of the Lost Ark curdles into adolescence, its gaudy yucks include a buffet of baked serpents and monkey brains plus sacramental open-heart surgery courtesy of the malevolent guru (Amrish Puri). "Nothing shocks me. I'm a scientist." Gunga Din, Lost Horizon and The Magnificent Seven are among the ingredients of this slurry, whipped past exhilaration into numbness. (The weirdest borrowing is from Ray's Bigger Than Life for the hero's momentary zombified trance like a paterfamilias' narcotic trauma: "You drink blood, you not wake up from nightmare.") The ugliness is capped by the colonial cavalry's gallop to the rescue, itself capped by the closing view of smooching Hollywood stars and emaciated Third World urchins. "I'm not going to have anything nice to say about this place when I get back!" The best antidote is Carpenter's Big Trouble in Little China. Cinematography by Douglas Slocombe. With Roshan Seth, Philip Stone, Roy Chiao, David Yip, Raj Singh, and D.R. Nanayakkara.
--- Fernando F. Croce |