"Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" was directed by one of the most talented men in Hollywood today, but it's very hard to tell by what has been finally put on the screen. Sure, the Steven Spielberg technique and flair is ever-present; on a technically level, the movie is superbly done. Hence why the movie's two high points, fatally placed at opposite ends of each other, do ring so powerfully, and unsuccessfully coerced me into forgiving the utter boredom that I suffered through in the middle. Spielberg's hand is present in the second Indiana Jones film, but his heart is missing.
The movie gets off on the wrong foot very early on, after a rousing and clever opening sequence set in Shanghai. Then, toward the end, in a fantastic climax set upon a rickety old bridge spanning a chasm, it regains the momentum and joy of filmmaking that made "Raiders of the Lost Ark," among other Spielberg films, so strong. It is here that "Temple of Doom" accomplishes what its predecessor did: recalling the admittedly cheesy but nevertheless lovable Republic serials of the days gone by. Shootouts in big fancy casinos, with MacGuffins from opposite parties being exchanged via a turning table for drinks. Bad guys trapping our hero over a chasm, leaving him no choice but to cut the rope and take whatever chance he has left. And, in the tradition of those serials, we have crocodiles waiting at the bottom.
So amazingly enough, "Temple of Doom" soars whenever it stays out of the Temple of Doom. For once Indiana Jones and his two sidekicks, and obnoxious singer (Kate Capshaw) and an kid from Shanghai (Jonathan Ke Quan) start traveling into that booby trap-filled pyramid—the point where we would expect the movie to really get moving—everything begins to drag. And although I do compliment Spielberg for delivering the movie's best moments, I also shell him some blame for accepting the screenplay handed to him. One of the best things about "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was that both Spielberg and the screenplay had the same goal. Here, they split paths. The director wanted to continue the tradition of the Republic serials; the screenwriters wanted to make a dopey mishmash of kiddy comedy and gruesome terror. Everything that takes place inside the titular temple plays against each other. It includes scenes where Kate Capshaw is served movie-Indian food (in other words, grotesque bugs that are still living) and she attempts not to gag and is then contrasted with voodoo sacrifices, where the victim's heart is, right before our eyes, ripped out, and the body is thrown into a pit of magma. The screenplay handles these negatively conflicting attitudes with no discipline, resulting in a frantic, schizophrenic demeanor.
Is it not a coincidence that the two people who wrote "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, would, two years later, write the screenplay for another unpleasantly mean-spirited movie that would attempt to ram kid comedy with grotesque horror together? The hinted-at catastrophe: "Howard the Duck." That is where "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" goes so wrong: the unwillingness of the screenwriters to pick a mood and go with it. Harrison Ford is his usual charming self as the titular adventurer, but he's got nobody interesting to tag along with him. And in a movie like this, the hero can only be about as interesting as the adventure he is given to undertake. Dodging the Nazis while searching for religious artifacts worked before and after this movie, but running from voodoo practitioners and being hypnotized into nearly through a comrade into the core of the earth is not what I had in mind for an Indiana Jones adventure. The villains are memorable, but for all the wrong reasons. And his sidekicks are utterly obnoxious. It is hard to tell from this movie that Kate Capshaw is a talented actress. Her squealing and whining goes a long way and really fast. And it is no big wonder why Jonathan Ka Quan, as the little kid, never had a kickoff career. Yes, he was just a kid when making this picture, but there is none of that real spark the audience looks for in a character we're meant to root for.
I wanted more of the traditional stuff when the movie goes into the temple. More booby traps, more trying to figure out how to escape, more fights where the hero has to worry more about being shot or impaled as opposed to being burned alive (because the former can be dealt with in a way that is not unpleasantly gruesome in a movie meant to be joyously enjoyable), and a lot less of the mean-spirited material we get in this installment of the series. In watching "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," I was overcome with this horrible sensation that I never before felt about a Steven Spielberg film: he made a movie he probably would have never wanted to see.
The movie gets off on the wrong foot very early on, after a rousing and clever opening sequence set in Shanghai. Then, toward the end, in a fantastic climax set upon a rickety old bridge spanning a chasm, it regains the momentum and joy of filmmaking that made "Raiders of the Lost Ark," among other Spielberg films, so strong. It is here that "Temple of Doom" accomplishes what its predecessor did: recalling the admittedly cheesy but nevertheless lovable Republic serials of the days gone by. Shootouts in big fancy casinos, with MacGuffins from opposite parties being exchanged via a turning table for drinks. Bad guys trapping our hero over a chasm, leaving him no choice but to cut the rope and take whatever chance he has left. And, in the tradition of those serials, we have crocodiles waiting at the bottom.
So amazingly enough, "Temple of Doom" soars whenever it stays out of the Temple of Doom. For once Indiana Jones and his two sidekicks, and obnoxious singer (Kate Capshaw) and an kid from Shanghai (Jonathan Ke Quan) start traveling into that booby trap-filled pyramid—the point where we would expect the movie to really get moving—everything begins to drag. And although I do compliment Spielberg for delivering the movie's best moments, I also shell him some blame for accepting the screenplay handed to him. One of the best things about "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was that both Spielberg and the screenplay had the same goal. Here, they split paths. The director wanted to continue the tradition of the Republic serials; the screenwriters wanted to make a dopey mishmash of kiddy comedy and gruesome terror. Everything that takes place inside the titular temple plays against each other. It includes scenes where Kate Capshaw is served movie-Indian food (in other words, grotesque bugs that are still living) and she attempts not to gag and is then contrasted with voodoo sacrifices, where the victim's heart is, right before our eyes, ripped out, and the body is thrown into a pit of magma. The screenplay handles these negatively conflicting attitudes with no discipline, resulting in a frantic, schizophrenic demeanor.
Is it not a coincidence that the two people who wrote "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, would, two years later, write the screenplay for another unpleasantly mean-spirited movie that would attempt to ram kid comedy with grotesque horror together? The hinted-at catastrophe: "Howard the Duck." That is where "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" goes so wrong: the unwillingness of the screenwriters to pick a mood and go with it. Harrison Ford is his usual charming self as the titular adventurer, but he's got nobody interesting to tag along with him. And in a movie like this, the hero can only be about as interesting as the adventure he is given to undertake. Dodging the Nazis while searching for religious artifacts worked before and after this movie, but running from voodoo practitioners and being hypnotized into nearly through a comrade into the core of the earth is not what I had in mind for an Indiana Jones adventure. The villains are memorable, but for all the wrong reasons. And his sidekicks are utterly obnoxious. It is hard to tell from this movie that Kate Capshaw is a talented actress. Her squealing and whining goes a long way and really fast. And it is no big wonder why Jonathan Ka Quan, as the little kid, never had a kickoff career. Yes, he was just a kid when making this picture, but there is none of that real spark the audience looks for in a character we're meant to root for.
I wanted more of the traditional stuff when the movie goes into the temple. More booby traps, more trying to figure out how to escape, more fights where the hero has to worry more about being shot or impaled as opposed to being burned alive (because the former can be dealt with in a way that is not unpleasantly gruesome in a movie meant to be joyously enjoyable), and a lot less of the mean-spirited material we get in this installment of the series. In watching "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," I was overcome with this horrible sensation that I never before felt about a Steven Spielberg film: he made a movie he probably would have never wanted to see.