Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

While Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is an obvious step down from its stellar predecessor, the film generally remains a tolerable endeavor that’s elevated by Harrison Ford’s engaging performance and the inclusion of several genuinely thrilling action sequences. This time around, Ford’s Indiana Jones must battle a sinister cult leader (Amrish Puri’s Mola Ram) bent on world domination – with his efforts consistently hampered by his two unlikely sidekicks (Jonathan Ke Quan’s sassy Short Round and Kate Capshaw’s whiny Willie). Director Steven Spielberg – working from Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz’s screenplay – kicks things off with a frenetic first reel that’s nothing short of exhausting, as the filmmaker bombards the viewer with a barrage of action that just feels needlessly noisy and almost entirely free of context. And while Spielberg slowly-but-surely does manage to draw one into the admittedly thin storyline, there’s never a point at which Quan’s Short Round and (especially) Capshaw’s Willie are successfully able to ingratiate themselves to the audience – with both characters coming off as wholly inferior successors to Karen Allen’s Marion Ravenwood. Ford’s expectedly solid turn as the title figure proves instrumental in allaying their ineffectiveness, however, and there inevitably reaches a point at which the frequent lulls in the narrative are rendered moot by the proliferation of high-octane set-pieces (ie the third act’s famed mine chase). Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is undoubtedly heads and shoulders above the majority of its adventure-movie brethren, yet it’s ultimately impossible to view the film as anything but a drastic step down from its superior forebear.

*** out of ****

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