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Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom (1984)

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Overall Rating 74%
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Ranked #277
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Connections: Indiana Jones

In 1935, Indiana Jones arrives in India, still part of the British Empire, and is asked to find a mystical stone. He then stumbles upon a secret cult committing enslavement and human sacrifices in the catacombs of an ancient palace. --IMDb
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Review by Chad
Added: September 20, 2006
Most sequels suck. While there are some exceptions to the rule, it usually goes without saying that if a movie title has "Part 2", "Returns", or any variation of those tags, it's probably not going to be worth the price of admission. Now, I wouldn't go so far as to say this particular sequel (or prequel, or whatever the hell you want to call it) sucks, but I will say that it's a huge step down from Raiders of the Lost Ark in terms of storyline, action sequences, and characters.

Taking place a year before the events found within Raiders, the storyline revolves around Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) and his quest to retrieve a magical Shankara stone from a group of Indian Kali worshipers in order to help out a local peasant village. These Kali worshipers have also kidnapped all of the children from these peasants, and honestly, that's about all there is to the storyline. Sure, there are some obstacles thrown in the way, but these are mainly used as a setup for the next action sequence and really have no other bearing on the overall story. Dr. Jones, as he now prefers to be called, is accompanied by the highly-annoying lounge singer Wilhelmina "Willie" Scott (Kate Capshaw) and the twelve year old "Short Round" (Jonathan Ke Quan) during his quest, and the less said about those two, the better.

Basically, you could sum up the entire storyline as such: there's a magical stone inside a hidden, underground hideout (contained within a majestic palace, no less), there are evil people guarding it, and Jones has to get the stone and emerge intact. I'll admit that the storyline found within Raiders wasn't exactly top-notch material either, but it was told in a very entertaining fashion and had plenty of surprises to keep the movie rolling along. Here, it's simply a matter of getting from point 'A' to point 'B' over the course of two hours with some action sequences and gross-out scenes thrown in for good measure.

There are three very nice action sequences found within this film, don't get me wrong - they didn't design an entire rollercoaster ride after the mine car scene for no good reason, the final battle atop the flimsy bridge was a work of art, and the opening scene (which takes place in "Club Obi Wan", no less) was a great way to kick the movie off. It's the rest of the scenes that bring the movie down from the masterpiece that was Raiders. In the original, every last action sequence was brilliant; you'd barely have time to recover from one before the next one started, but here, the vast majority of these sequences are just... there. They're not bad, mind you, but they are a huge step down after watching the original.

By far my biggest gripe of the film, however, concerns the characters within. I enjoyed Harrison Ford once again and the villains were your typical bad guys, no complaints on either of those - but Dr. Jones' sidekicks ruined the movie for me. In Raiders, Indy had Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) as a female sidekick. Marion had a long history with Jones in the storyline, she provided a romance subplot for the film, and she also knew how to throw down when it came time to do battle with the Nazis - in other words, she had a reason to be there and added to the storyline with her presence. Here, Indy is stuck with Kate Capshaw, a woman with a voice that could shatter glass that does nothing much other than shriek and complain. It wouldn't have been quite so terrible if the woman could, I don't know, act, but she fails in even that regard; indeed, the only reason she got this leading role in the first place was because she was sleeping with director Steven Spielberg at the time. If you think I'm being too harsh on this lady, just take a look at the "career" she had after starring in this movie; there's quite a bit of difference between "leading role in the sequel to one of the most beloved movies of all time, which was directed by one of the biggest names in Hollywood" and "minor role in a shitty made-for-TV movie."

On the other side of the coin, we have Jonathan Ke Quan in the obligatory child role, no doubt added so that the twelve year olds in the audience could "connect with" someone their own age. I'm not going to gripe too much about him since he did a better job than most twelve year olds would (that's not saying much, though), but once again, this character provides proof that children should not have starring roles in movies that weren't designed specifically for other children.

Although I really did nothing but point out the shortcomings of the film in this review, I did enjoy it to a certain extent, but watching it after Raiders is like going from a steak and shrimp dinner one night to hot pockets the next. There's nothing wrong with hot pockets, mind you, but after getting a taste of the good life, the difference is readily apparent with each bite. 6/10.
bluemeanie #1: bluemeanie - added September 21, 2006 at 4:46pm
This flick tends to get a bad wrap as the worst of the series, and while it probably is the worst of the three, it is still heads and shoulders better than 99% of every other action/adventure film ever made. This film is still a 10/10, as were all of the "Indiana Jones" films. This set-up is just so bad ass and the ending is one of the classic endings in Hollywood history. I love, love, loved this film.
Griffinheart #2: Griffinheart - added December 16, 2007 at 4:38pm
There are so many points of this film to love, particularly when the man gets his heart ripped out and the feast scene with monkey brain soup. I actually enjoyed Ke Quan in here ("It wasn't me, Dr. Jones! It was the girl, the girl!"). 10/10
Lucid Dreams #3: Lucid Dreams - added May 30, 2010 at 10:03pm
I will agree with the two above me that this movie is great, but I wouldn't give it a perfect score. 8/10
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