The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Hollywood Follies

I admit that I only watched this film because it had Erich von Stroheim in it, and didn't even finish watching it, and know nothing about the Indiana Jones series, so maybe I'm missing something here, but so much about this movie was so terrible that it wasn't even funny.

It wasn't ALL bad -- actually, the sets and costuming were excellent (the 1920s - such an aesthetically pleasing time period!). And the bits of the actual movie "Foolish Wives" were good, because they had the authentic Erich in them. The most painful parts seemed to occur whenever the main characters had dialogue. Some of the lines exchanged between young Indiana Jones and the heroine made me want to retch. There are some actors whose delivery and skill can make a cheesy piece of dialogue work -- these two do not belong to this group. They were trying to be youthfully cutesy, and the results were not pretty. The heroine says things you'd never expect anyone to say in normal conversation, lines that sound clumsy and forced, especially out of her mouth -- she doesn't seem comfortable in her role.

And then there's Erich von Stroheim. True, the guy did seem to be having a lot of fun playing the role -- and the back of his head was identical to Stroheim's (you couldn't really expect much more; Stroheim was unique, no conventional Hollywood pretty-boy, and you'd be hard-pressed to find someone whose looks were remotely similar). Actually, the scenes with Stroheim would have been enjoyable IF he hadn't used that overdone corny fake German accent. Did he do any research at ALL? Did he bother to look at any of the talkies Stroheim was in? Erich von Stroheim was Austrian. Austrian! Austrian!! And there's a huge difference between an Austrian and a blatantly false German accent. It was embarrassing -- I might have been able to enjoy it and root for him if he had been a bit more convincing, but I couldn't get over the way he was mangling Stroheim's delicate growl, with that lilting Austrian twang, into the voice of a hysterical cartoon Nazi.

Whew, I needed to get that off my chest.

I have yet to see so many of these films and episodes of the TV Show. I thought I was going to be disappointed when I watched this film. I was wrong. It's not the same Indy as the Spielberg-directed films, but how could it be? Instead, this film was approached in a kind of documentary-style. Keeping in check with the other Indy films, there are, of course, recognisable elements. I particularly enjoyed the fictitious telling of the making of a John Ford film(I forget which one it was, if it was any of them). I don't think Indy is the main character in these films. He's like the missing link to tell us these stories that Mr. Lucas dreamed up. I don't think they explain certain questions that are constantly asked about older Indy, but I don't really care. That would be doing the series injustice. Each Indy adventure is approached with a James Bond-ish...approach. None of the adventures continue into the next one. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Now, if it was Star Wars, well...

It is around 1921. Indy is hired by Carl Laemmle to get legendary director Erich von Stroheim to finish his picture Foolish Wives, spiralling past the one million dollar mark (a fortune in those days), in ten days.

In actual fact, the total cost of production wasn't even $900 000, the studio just wanted to market it as "the first million dollar picture," which created the impression Stroheim was wasteful, which dogged him the rest of his short career. But never mind that, and never mind the fact that there is no pistol duel in Foolish Wives, or that Stroheim was from Austria not Germany (therefore did not sound like the "was ist das?" charicature we get here), or that Ford's first feature "Straight Shooting" was made in 1917, six years before Stroheim's Foolish Wives! Everything is simplified in this picture for consumption by a pre-teen audience. So bearing that in mind, its all fairly good-natured and harmless fun.

The makers of his picture had great love for Stroheim's picture: at one point they are looking at a scene from Foolish Wives and they say, quitely rightly, how wonferful it is, and that it could be one of the best ever, and therefore its "worth saving". They seem to indulge in the persona he created for himself in a loving way. Stroheim loved playing the villain, but he did it with more of a sense of humour than the hard-faced man who plays him here. Stroheim has to be a formidable villain here, to create enough conflict for Indy to go up against in getting him to finish the picture.

It looks like a midday movie/tele-feature, and Jason Patrick Flanery has the corny do-gooder persona of a children's television host, so the main appeal in this is for fans of the silent days. Its an ode to classic cinema, with swiring romantic scores behind love scenes and bouncing fun music to other scenes. Its really two TV episodes knitted together in the middle: Indy trying to get Stroheim to finish his picture in ten days and Indy working as John Ford's assistant. The two halves have little in common with each other, save the fact that they're both Hollywood-related.

John Ford, Erich von Stroheim and Irving Thalberg are the three major figures who are played with plenty of screen time, but also included are glimpses of Gloria Swanson, Rudolph Valentino, Pola Negri, Carl Bernstein and Carl Laemmle.

If you see this in the TV guide, its worth at least an hour of your time, as long as you don't expect historial accuracy. Especially fun if you're a fan of the silent era, or Stroheim and Ford in particular. Juvenile and simplistic, but lots of fun.