Unusual and dark Lucas/Spielberg vehicle
1984 's "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" is set a year before our favourite archaeologist's search for the ark of the covenant. Beginning in Shanghai, the movie quickly throws our hero and his two sidekicks (Kate Capshaw's nightclub singer Willie and Jonathan Ke Quan's juvenile offender Short Round) into rural India. There they are being convinced to go on a quest to look for a village's missing children and its missing holy Sankara Stone at the nearby temple. The temple turns out to be ruled by the Thugee Cult, a Kali - worshipping bunch of eaters of monkey brains, cow - eye soup and "Snake Surprise" (cooked Anaconda filled with eels), enslaving the local chidren in subterran mines. This is of course a state of affairs that needs to be rectified, so Indy and the entourage sort these fellows out good.
There are many things that can be held against this film: The most important aspect must be Kate Capshaw's presence and her portrayal of the most annoying female character in movie history, which goes pretty much for Quan's character. I don't think that I have ever heard so much high pitched yelling in one movie. The special effects unfortunately suffer from bad bluescreen disease and the script (not by Philip Kaufman and Lawrence Kasdan this time) has plotholes as big as the Punjab. Then there is the overreliance on cinematic quotes from the first Indiana Jones movie: the fistfight against a large, muscular opponent which ends with annihilation to mincemeat, the swashbuckling opponent scene in which he grabs his gun and thousands of machinegun/arrow shots that miraculously seem to miss any good guys. The acting is wooden and to call the storyline racist would be mild understatement, as it is obvious that educated Indians can't be up to no good. Especially if they're educated in Oxford.
Nevertheless it's an enjoyable romp: much darker than the other two Indy movies, this has impressive art direction and the sets are straight out of nightmare territory. The bad guys are far more frightening than the usual Nazis, and hey, the future Mrs. Spielberg tugged strings in the male psyche that were certainly much more elementary than Karen Allen and Alison Doody's more cultured characters could achieve. The sequences in the mine's tunnels are well executed and the human sacrifice scene is positivily frightening, thanks to John Williams's terrifying score.
So, is it really that bad? Well, yes. But if you leave your brain at the door and take the whole thing lightheartedly, it will provide you with 118 exhilarating minutes. Just don't take it seriously.
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Source: imdb.com