Raiders

Where were you last Thursday night?

If you weren't at the Riverview Theater to see the local screening of Raiders you missed out on something pretty cool.

A couple of years ago I read a few news items about a couple of kids who made a scene for scene version of Raiders of the Lost Ark . They were 12 when they started and they finished at age 19. [Read more at Harry's Reviews, Wired and MPR] I immediately wanted to see the movie, but figured it would never get released as it would be impossible to clear the rights given that it was a derived work from a major studio. Fast forward to last week when I get an IM from some guy who said it was playing at the Riverview Theater and did I want to check it out. You bet I did, it had been years since I had seen the original news story.

The file was $10 a head, $8 if you came in costume. One guy showed up with a quite convincing Jones get-up and cracked a whip over the audience to start the show. I decided against the costume myself.

When the movie started with it's crappy distorted color and some obviously very young kids walking through a forest I was a little worried it was going to be awful. It didn't take much time for the production values to fade away. I spent the rest of the movie completely blown away at how faithful these kids were to the original movie and how they had copied the entire movie in an obsessive way that reflected a kind of love of the original movie bordering on a sick compulsion. It was a thing of beauty.

I don't know how these kids survived the filming. The fire scenes were painful to watch as a parent wondering how the kids didn't manage to burn their house down.

The movie was fun. It didn't add a lot to the original classic other than the fact that when the Harrison Ford lines are said by a teenager you realize exactly how stupendously ridiculous they actually are.

They only show the film for charity events as a way to keep from butting heads with the studio lawyers. If you have a chance to see this film jump at it.