Keeley Coleman
The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;
Zlatica
One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.
Billy Ollie
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
MissSimonetta
To be honest, I watched this because I am an avid silent film geek and love von Stroheim's movies-- in addition to Indiana Jones.Really, this episode seems more like it would appeal to silent film nerds rather than IJ fans. It focuses on the excitement and discovery of early Hollywood, with Indiana Jones mostly peripheral, especially when we get to the John Ford segment (I'm guessing the filmmakers are Ford fans, because boy, the fan service is strong with this one, though I'm not complaining). However, I imagine most silent film fans will raise an eyebrow at the rather telescoped view of film history on display here. It's 1920, but the film is still acting like two-reelers are the biggest and most common part of movie business when features pretty much took over the market by 1915? About the only people having that trouble were the comedians like Chaplin and Keaton, and even then, there were feature comedies before The Kid (1921). Also, they made von Stroheim a cartoonish German ("VAT DAS IST--?!"), when he was actually Austrian. A strange oversight, considering there are plenty of sound films featuring von Stroheim and his lovely voice.The romantic subplot, observing the love triangle between Indy, the writer Claire, and her clumsy boyfriend Tony, is at times poignant, and at other times painful. And by painful I mean the dialogue is wretched, prefiguring the "love scenes" to come in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones with their gooey, stilted awfulness, blech. That Claire and Indy barely shared much chemistry didn't help.Of course, the lack of smugness regarding silent cinema is refreshing. The filmmakers give this unique medium respect, which I appreciated immensely as a fan. And that ending shot, of Indy driving off into the sunset, is just a perfect cap for the series altogether, linking it with Last Crusade.
Alain English
Out of work in New York after his romantic disaster, Indiana Jones (Sean Patrick Flanery) finds work with Universal Pictures who send him to Hollywood to put an end to the activities of maniacal Erich von Stroheim (Dana Gladstone), a film director who gone out of control. Later on, he assist Western director John Ford (Stephen Caffrey) in a dangerous adventure that nearly destroys him...The scripts mix fine character comedy with insights on the film business in the twenties. Forget the romance he has with screenwriter Claire (Allison Smith) which is just a repeat of the romance he had with Mata Hari. Much better are his frustrated and eventually doomed efforts to stop von Stroheim. More than that, a tragedy on the set of John Ford's picture forces Indy in front of camera. It's fun watching the adventurer struggle to act in silent films and having to stop a runaway coach.Dana Gladstone is brilliant as the fiendishly ingenious von Stroheim, and there is some good work from Stephen Caffrey as a likable John Ford and Bill Cusack as Hollywood's first mogul Irving Thalberg. Leo Gordon has a nice cameo as an aged Wyatt Earp.So what for the series as a whole - a worthwhile project? I would argue, yes it was. The series maintained high-production values throughout it's entire run and these are evident here on the DVDs. Bar the occasional slip, almost every episode worked on one level or another. Lucasfilm attracted some of the highest calibre actors in the US and UK to do the series and, by and large, they all delivered.The only real problem the series had was the depiction of Indy himself. This is not Sean Patrick Flanery's fault, as the series was originally shot and shown out of chronological order. It would have been very hard under these circumstances to properly develop his character. But I would have loved to have seen some of the canny ruthlessness and grizzled humour that characterised Indy in the movies. As it is, for all his experiences, Young Indy remains straight-laced as a boot. Flanery is always highly watchable in the role, but nevertheless his performance is uninvolving at times. It's still a shame there were never more episodes made to link up the series to the films.I have thoroughly enjoyed watching and reviewing each of these episodes and I would encourage all fans of Indiana Jones to give the DVD series a chance.
TxMike
I found this movie much better than its IMDb rating would suggest. It was clearly written and made by those who have an appreciation of the history of Hollywood film making. The story with Indiana Jones' involvement is fictional, but deals with two giants of early film, an immigrant from Austria, Erich Von Stroheim, and the prolific John Ford who in the late 1910s and the 1920s made as many as 20 to 25 movies a year, many of them westerns.Sean Patrick Flanery returns as Young Indiana Jones, Archeology student who on a visit to New York (in a prior episode) took control of a bad situation and helped a stage production succeed. This time a movie mogul in New York pays Indy to go to 1922 Hollywood and force director Erich Von Stroheim to finish "Foolish Wives" which had already exceeded $1Million in cost and was nowhere near completion. He was to give him 10 more days. This story is the first half of the movie, and like the real strong-headed Von Stroheim this character is not willing to cooperate.The second half of the movie has Indy working for train money back to school in Chicago, and he becomes an assistant to John Ford in his latest movie. Ford is determined to finish it is 6 days. As they shoot a few things go wrong and they end up with no more stunt men, all lost to injuries. So Indy is pressed into service for an extra $60, and in his stunt to jump from a horse onto horses pulling a wagon, we see a prequel to the famous scene in "Raiders" where he slides under a moving truck to get back in and overcome the Nazis. There is a budding love story with very pretty Allison Smith as writer Claire Lieberman. It is left unresolved because Indy has to travel. Other historical characters include Irving Thalberg, George Gershwin, Harry Carey, and Wyatt Earp. The DVD is even more interesting because of the extras. One is of the life of Von Stroheim and his difficulties with Hollywood bosses. He was generally known as a movie-making genius, but he tended to make 8 or 9 hour movies which had no legitimate market. He eventually moved to France where his genius was more appreciated. The other is of John Ford. Each is about 30 minutes long.
Ben Parker
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.
