A Major Disappointment

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

A trio of schoolchildren spent eight summers in the 1980s filming Raiders Of The Lost Ark in their parents' cellars, impressively setting the cellars on fire, and doing all of the stunt-work themselves, getting ships to film scenes, with all of the passion and intensity Spielberg must have had.The trio used comic book adaptations, and saw the film as many times as possible, snuck in audio recorders to the cinema, hand drew storyboards, and filmed and starred in it themselves. A true labour of love, and well worth it. We, the audience, watch, knowing what scene comes next, and not wondering *if* these kids will do it, but trying to figure *how* they will do it. Some of the fire stunts were quite impressive, and could have turned disastrous, had anything gone wrong. (One of many jokes put into the closing credits says, thanks to "Mary Zala, for her support and for destroying her home")This film, and its 2015 documentary counterpart, Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made, are required viewing for Indiana Jones fans, and film buffs.

I was dumbstruck watching this. Yeah, it's obviously not as well-executed as the original, but you have to admire the dedication and energy.At the end, after the lid on the ark comes down and Indy and Marion hug, I cried. I didn't cry at this point when watching the original. I was just so touched at the love and passion these kids lavished on trying to pay honor to the wonderfulness of the original.Well! All that gushing aside, anything else? This was certainly a worthwhile enterprise, but I do sincerely hope these kids have gone on to create and wrangle media. It'd be nice to see them get a budget and bring something fully of their own to marvelous fruition.

I too cannot fathom why the rating is so low unless a bunch of people put in bogus ratings. Up until a major showing in Minneapolis in June 2007 (a week and a half ago from this post), I doubt many people have ever even seen this movie in its entirety - making the 51 ratings pretty suspect.If you know the background then watching this movie is more thrilling than watching the original.Incidentally, Paramount (the original Raiders studio) has just optioned the life story of the kids who made this movie. I'm eagerly awaiting the "movie of the movie of the movie"!!!

Currently the review meter is at 4.something stars. That is just plain wrong. I don't understand how anyone could see this and give it a bad rating. It's obvious more work and ingenuity went into it than most other actual Hollywood movies. The bar and truck scenes are both exciting and were brilliantly shot and edited...by freakin' kids! There's pyro, stunts, kissing, blood, violence, all that great stuff. How they were able to stay on course with such a long enormous project and have it come out so spectacularly well is the stuff of legend. These guys set themselves on fire and jumped out of moving trucks. They deserve to have a major film made about them.Fascinating and watchable as hell.