#66 - Raiders of the Lost Ark

I love a movie that doesn't let you breathe. Like "Tootsie," this movie is so mainstream and classic, it's hard not to love. We all know the story. Harrison Ford plays Indiana Jones, a renegade paleontology professor/adventurer who goes on an expedition to find the Ark of the Covenant before the Third Reich can get its 1936 hands on it. Whip-snapping, love-making, and face-melting soon follows.

The movie, in my opinion, has two characteristics that make it one of the greatest of all time: its humor and its pace.

First, its humor. Who can forget this scene, a moment my father references about twice a year on average? But more than this, the movie is funny beyond the obvious sight gags and wit of Indiana. The movie makes the viewer laugh in relief when we see how Indiana gets out of his next mess. We are breathlessly humored to see how the filmmakers have stacked adventure on top of adventure, incident on top of incident.

Linked to the movie's humor is its pace. The opening scene sets the pace for the rest of the movie: a completely detached experience from the files of Indiana, we see him steal an idol in the jungle and lose it when his arch-nemesis shows up at an inopportune time. The scene never gives you a chance to breathe, which is how I'm sure it really is when you're in the same line of work as Indiana Jones. From there, we go to a paleontology classroom. There are two scenes of explanation, and then we're off again, flying across the map of the world to Nepal, Egypt, England. It just blazes.

"Raiders" was also a technological triumph -- from the subtle logo-to-mountain opening of the film to the blinding light and gusting winds when the Ark is opened, the film's special effects were top-notch for 1982 (thanks to George Lucas's visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic).

This movie is all about pure entertainment. The characters are great, and they go through a lot of stuff: as Roger Ebert said in his original review, "He survives fires, crushings, shootings, burnings. He really hates snakes." They are all classic, and so is the movie they call home.