The problem is that ultimately, the movie only works if no one except for Indy--and maybe Marion--is real. Otherwise the extensive body count, and the number of dark-skinned people who are just there to help Indy and react to things, gets very old very fast. And once I realized that most of the people weren't real, the only character I could care about was Marion, and it wasn't enough to carry the scenes she wasn't in.

S says, "And then there are the snakes," but actually we enjoyed trying to identify all the species. And hoping Indy would be reassured that actually some of them were glass lizards.