- Pauline Kael described it as "so thrill-packed you don’t have time to breathe -- or to enjoy yourself much, either." Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader was more damning, claiming that the director knows "nothing about narrative rhythm." The director? Steven Spielberg. The film? Raiders of the Lost Ark. Now I consider Kael and Kehr both to be interesting critics even though (or possibly because) I don't always agree with them, but I just couldn't figure out how they were both so far off the mark on this one. Then it hit me: they were talking about the wrong movie. That's right, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom must have been what Kael and Kehr thought they saw back in 1981. Maybe the reels had somehow been swapped, perhaps time had been warped...I don't know how it works! The point is that those (and other) criticisms that didn't really fit Raiders of the Lost Ark actually do hang pretty well on its sequel.
- The film starts off on a strong enough note, as the ever-adventurous Dr. Jones (Harrison Ford) saunters into a Shanghai nightclub to test his wits against a cabal of Chinese gangsters. A few sips of poison, lots of kinetic camerawork, and about a thousand machine gun rounds later, Jones and his hostage of convenience, the singing, dancing diva Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw), are leaping out the window only to (eventually) land in a car operated by the diminutive Short Round (Jonathan Ke Quan). But the chase hardly ends there. Naturally, the plane they charter is owned by the gangsters from whom they just escaped, which just as naturally means a surprise layover in the jungles of India. When the local blighted village tells tales of missing children, stolen magical stones, and forbidden rituals, how can a daring archaeologist resist?
- Before long, the trio reaches the halls of Pankot, a foreboding palace ruled by a young Maharajah (Raj Singh) and his silver-tongued Prime Minister (Roshan Seth). There, the heroic trio is invited to a dinner that consists exclusively of things that nobody should ever eat. We're talking bugs, eels, eyeballs, and monkeys, here. Should we be surprised that people who enjoy such cuisine also conduct rituals of human sacrifice as part of a death cult that enslaves children? Sure enough, that's exactly what Indy and company discover when they stumble upon a bizarrely grotesque, heart-rending ritual conducted by the demonic Mola Ram (Amrish Puri) in the caverns of Pankot. Time to beat up some cultists, free some children, and recover some stones! Sacrifices, mine cars, excitement!!
- So what's the problem with Temple of Doom? As my description may have implied, the film differs from its predecessor in that it truly values action over adventure. The first third of the film has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the story, aside from providing the heroes with a slam-bang reason to go to India. Once there, the audience is treated to plenty of exciting scenes, the best of which involves an extensive mine car chase, but we are never given any reasons to care about the characters. Part of the problem may be Kate Capshaw's rendition of Willie Scott. While Short Round is a likable and welcome addition to the Indy team (and, oddly enough, the most fully realized character in the movie), Scott's shrieking awfulness is enough to make an audience question whether she actually deserves to be saved from the clutches of Mola Ram. Annoying characters aside, the film's other big problem is its choice of stories. Everybody can agree that the Nazis from the first installment were a bad bunch--heck, even comic book superheroes were punching Hitler in the face. But picking on Hindus and their, in my limited experience, generally delicious food? Not as convincing. In fact, "not as convincing" is probably the best phrase I could summon to describe this film.
- This film is one of the two credited with spurring the PG-13 rating.
- Was that Dan Aykroyd? Yes, it was.
- Kate Capshaw went to Hazelwood Central. That explains it.
- There are a couple of funny references to the first film, including the Paramount logo dissolving into an image of a mountain and Indy reaching for his gun against swordsmen.
