After Spielberg's disastrous turn at AI and with Lucasfilm's self-destructing STAR WARS saga, it's hard to believe there was a time when these two could do no wrong.  Think about it.  JAWS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, BACK TO THE FUTURE, AMERICAN GRAFFITI, STAR WARS, THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK . and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. Not exactly high art but certainly a rollicking good time. You can see the seeds of their sad decline in the just released ADVENTURES OF INDIANA JONES: THE COMPLETE DVD MOVIE COLLECTION. RAIDERS is arguably the cream of the crop, the peak. And then we were bombarded by RETURN OF THE JEDI, INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM, ET, INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE, BACK TO THE FUTURE sequels, and, uh, did I mention HOWARD THE DUCK? How did it come to this? Perhaps it's just childhood nostalgia, but even while in elementary school, I knew RETURN OF THE JEDI sucked. What had the Ewoks done with the real George Lucas? 

I'm going to start with the bad stuff, and TEMPLE OF DOOM is the worst. I know Spielberg and Lucas were going for a B-movie serial matinee vibe, but they souped it up so well in RAIDERS, there's no avoiding disappointment with this sequel. It's one thing to see so much effort and money lavished on a tightly constructed, thoughtful production.  It's another to see them wasted on a piece of crap story/script, the likes of which I'm not going to bother outlining.

As for the acting, I don't know whether to commend Karen Allen for bowing out of the sequels or curse her for leaving us with the most annoying love interest possible for Dr. Jones. Kate Capshaw's Willie Scott is a nagging, bitching, whining pain in the ass. It's bad enough that she truly is a damsel in distress. But, geez, couldn't she have been at least a quiet damsel in distress? As Indy says, "The biggest trouble with her is the noise!"  Her character has not one redeeming quality, and if they were going for humor, I missed it. Ford is charming as ever, but he doesn't have much to work with and there's never any chemistry between the two of them. Then there's the over-the-top gross-out fests, a lot of loud, excessive action, blah, blah, blah.

LAST CRUSADE is an improvement over TEMPLE OF DOOM, but it's still missing too much to recommend. It plays more as a comedy than anything else - kind of a sad parody of Indy-isms. I did enjoy Sean Connery as the bumbling Dr. Jones, Sr., but the tone of this film is much too light for me. Now maybe I'm not recommending LAST CRUSADE, but I do urge you to see the first 15 minutes with the late River Phoenix as young Indy. A bit ironic that one of the most inspired sequences of the entire trilogy doesn't involve Harrison Ford at all. Phoenix has got the scruffy physicality of Ford down - the simultaneously spastic and graceful waddle-run, the grunting, the gasping, the extreme fear of snakes. It's worth owning this set just for Phoenix's scenes.

And, yes, I'm full of clichés. I've saved the best - RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK - for last. I was like a little kid again when I popped this disc into the player. Took my original Indy Kenner 12" action figure down from the shelf, put the bullwhip in his hand, the DVD remote in mine, and we were off. I'll admit I was a little nervous, as I hadn't seen this film in at least a decade. Had time eroded my ability to enjoy such just-for-the-fun-of-it fare from my childhood? HELL, NO! This film holds up pretty darn well. From the opening "Let's-see-it-in-THX" swell, my heart was thumping. We've got action, adventure, romance, a little comedy, quite a bit of horror, the wrath of God - all in such a tightly-knit 115 minutes. No fat to trim off this puppy.

For me, this is Ford in his prime. We all say EEEEEWWWWW, but if I were Calista Flockhart, I'd probably spill a drink on him and marry him, too. And as I've already mentioned, Karen Allen is irreplaceable as Marion Ravenwood, the feisty, hard drinking, semi-tough chick who also manages to save her man on more than one occasion. The extras disc, by the way, has some great snippets of screen tests. Don't think this film would've been too memorable without Ford and Allen.

As for the extras, wish there had been some feature-length commentary.  Oh well. There are some nice "making of" documentaries on each of the films, though, with some great interviews. Also segments on stunt work and John Williams' scoring. But the real gem here is the piece on my childhood hero, sound designer Ben Burtt. Now I remember why I used to make audio copies of these films from laser discs so I could listen to them on my Walkman. Little did I know I was really listening to wet sponges, cheese casserole, baseball gloves, and raw meat.

My tone has shifted considerably since the beginning of this review. If you can justify paying for TEMPLE OF DOOM and LAST CRUSADE in order to have RAIDERS and the extras disc, then this set is worth your trouble. The two extremes cancel each other out, so I'm going to have to give this a straight, middle-of-the-road 3 rating.