Regarding Young Henry

Usually when I watch The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles I tend to skip around to this or that episode that draws my interest for various reasons. Although there is a serial quality to the series with episodes frequently ending in ways that lead into the next, particularly in the case of the reedited version of the series that appeared in the late '90s, the stories all still feel very disconnected from one another, typically featuring Indy meeting a whole new cast of characters and forming new friendships that are rarely referenced in later episodes. But I decided to go back to the first episode, in its reedited form appropriately called My First Adventure. The reedited version of the series typically cuts together two previously one hour episodes to create a TV movie. In this case, My First Adventure takes part of the original 1992 premiere episode, "Curse of the Jackal", and fills out the run time with a story filmed in 1996. Unfortunately, this means that actor Corey Carrier, who plays Indy at ages 8 to 10, looks and sounds markedly older in the second half of the episode than he does in the first. I do think he seems more Harrison Ford-ish than Sean Patrick Flanery but who really wants to see Indiana Jones as a kid? That is maybe the eternal flaw of the show but I was watching the first half of My First Adventure trying to pinpoint the real reason it doesn't work.

Little Indy goes to Egypt with his parents and meets pre-war TE Lawrence (Joseph A. Bennett) taking part in the exploration of a pyramid in 1908. The fact that Indy met just about every famous person in the world in his youth also cuts into the show's sense of credibility though I guess I appreciate the fact that George Lucas wanted to make the show educational. Indy encounters Lawrence again during the war (played by Douglas Henshall) for a better episode featuring a young Catherine Zeta-Jones. Mostly I'd say My First Adventure doesn't work because Indy himself comes off so flat. He's an enthusiastic kid but little else.

The second half of the episode is a little more interesting. The abruptly older young Indy moves on to Morocco where his father (Lloyd Owen doing a Sean Connery impression) has been engaged to deliver a lecture to the Sultan. Indy befriends a palace slave and I liked how the script framed Indy as a relatively sheltered white kid having direct exposure to slavery for the first time. The slave, Omar, has of course been kept ignorant of the world and listens amazed as Indy describes snow and sea travel. But Indy shows his own ignorance when he continually presumes Omar is at liberty to think for himself or express his own desires when asked a question.

One thing's for sure, the massive budget on the show is always visible in the extensive location shoots and enormous local cast.