Raiders of the Lost Ark

Hollywood's chutzpah whizzkids Spielberg and Lucas team up to bring the audiences who flocked to Star Wars and Close Encounters a replay of the innocent pleasures of Saturday serials, but done at two hours length with a much larger budget than the old cliffhangers could command. Spielberg's evasion of present day realities in an effort to recapture the sheer childlike fun of moviegoing is as perverse as was his previous film, 1941. What he offers is one long, breathtaking chase of a plot as his pre-World War II superhero, outsize and Bogartian, races to prevent the omnipotent Ark of the Covenant from falling into the hands of Hitler's Nazis. Whether you swallow it or not, see it for a handful of totally unexpected visual jokes, worth the price of admission alone.