Overall Rating
  Awesome: 35.71%
Worth A Look: 27.38%
Average: 25%
Pretty Bad: 7.14%
Total Crap: 4.76%
3 reviews, 66 user ratings
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| Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom |
by Slyder
"Misses the mark for obvious reasons"
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Making a sequel for some reason is one of the hardest things in filmmaking, and only the true masters of filmmaking are capable of duplicating the success of the original movie and even to a point, better it. Just ask Francis Ford Coppola, Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson amongst others. Steven Spielberg, being the master that he is, should’ve had no problem, but in the end did, unfortunately, since Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is probably the worst of the three films. After such a perfect beginning back in Raiders of the Lost Ark, this “Gunga Din tip-of-the-hat” movie just misses the mark, and for obvious reasons.The movie is essentially a prequel, since it happens a year before the raiding of the lost ark. After the mandatory kick-ass opening (which itself was a bit toned-down) involving Chinese Mobsters in Shanghai, Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) saddles up his new-found-and-soon-to-be-love Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw who would later be known as Mrs. Spielberg) and his young side-kick Short Round (Jonathan Ke Huy Quan) into India after their airplane crashes. They soon encounter a destroyed village and the head honcho of the village persuades Indy to rescue the “Ankara stone” and the village’s children from the hands of the evil Kali-worshipper Molo Ram (Amrish Puri) whom are imprisoned and enslaved in the mysterious Pankot Palace.
Ok, so I guess Lucas tried to go to darker territories just like he masterfully did so in Empire Strikes Back, but Lawrence Kasdan was unavailable for the screenplay so he had to hire the husband-wife team of Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, and the resulting screenplay is a dreadful mishmash of dramatic action pieces with some really unnecessarily dark moments (Huyck and Katz would later make the shitty Best Defense and the even shittier Howard the Duck). First of all, isn’t it strangely ironic that the majority of the action pieces shown here are screenwriting leftovers from the original Raiders of the Lost Ark? The whole focus from saving the world is reduced to saving children and a trio of magic rocks, which would’ve been okay in any other movie but here it just simply doesn’t fit. The whole bloody sacrifice scenes are too bloody and too scary to be any enjoyable simply because they don’t fit on the context. (It did of course create the new PG-13 rating though)
The whole formula that Raiders of the Lost Ark created or should I say regurgitated was one of 100% pure escapist entertainment. But adding this darker side and obvious moral dilemmas is a crucial error since not only the pace deadens but the whole bloody and moral messes it gets into just simply hampers the fun of the movie. Not to mention that the leftovers, which is the whole mine cart chase scene, and the rolling Chinese gong scene seem to be lacking not only the excitement but also a certain amount of credibility, especially the mine cart chase which honestly is absolutely preposterous. The laughs are few and far in between, and even some jokes come off as lame. Spielberg of course, tries to do the best of it with the material but even he is powerless to overcome the rough patches on the screenplay, and what the hell was it with the bugs?
Harrison Ford is of course like a glove fitting well in his reprisal of Indy and also does the best he can in trying to get this film going. Mrs. Spielberg does decently well though at times she was just really getting on my nerves. Not to mention that she doesn’t have shit against Karen Allen’s Marion Ravenwood. Now, I may get some flak for this but in all honesty Ke Huy Quan was utter shit as Short Round. I don’t even know why Lucas would come up with a hideously annoying character like that, and young Quan can’t act for shit either. Sure, he’s just a kid but he’s such an arrogant little brat that it was just hard to really like him. To quote fellow colleague Chris Parry, “I was hoping he’d get wasted,” at least a bit more than just that bitchslap.In the end, this film is an almost complete disappointment. It’s far from a bad film since it still contains a certain amount of elements to keep it going, but coming from two geniuses like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, you would’ve expected a little bit more out of it. Sure, I watched it like hell when I was a kid, but nowadays I can’t view without feeling a bit of annoyance and disappointment. Hell, the series wouldn’t recover until Indy saddled up 4 years later for the Last Crusade. 3-5
 del.icio.us 
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=2295&reviewer=235
originally posted: 10/13/04 06:02:48
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USA
02-Jul-1984 (PG)
UK
N/A
Australia
N/A
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