Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)

I wanted to see these Indiana Jones movies to refresh my memory about what they were all about, and come to find out, I haven't seen this one before. The only one I had seen was the Last Crusade, which makes sense, because it was made in 1989, and I then would have been old enough to watch these. I hadn't known that there was a five year gap between the movies.

Anyway, Temple of Doom opens up with one of the most exciting sequences possible. They travel high speed by car, plane, and boat. Then they end up by fate in a remote Indian village who had their sacred rock stolen, and their children kidnapped for slave labor. Of course our hero, Indiana Jones, and a nightclub singer, and Indiana's adopted Asian kid (?), go to retrieve the sacred rock and rescue the children.

Then a bunch of gross stuff happens with eating gross things, or reaching through, or walking through disgusting insects. Then the people who live in the "temple of doom" are having a religious service with human sacrifice and it's really evil and over the top. And not really entertaining to watch.

Then our protagonists get into trouble, and get out of it. And another exciting sequence, this time a high speed chase by underground coat (edit: I mean coal, but the first one is funny) cart, and on sketchy suspended bridges, ends the movie.

As you can gather, if you watch the beginning and end of the movie, it's really good. But if you skip everything in the middle you're not missing much.

Interesting tid bit: The director of the movie, Steven Spielberg, married the woman who played the nightclub singer/romantic interest / comic relief clown, after working on the film together. He also is quoted as saying he is not too proud of this movie, and he made it at a bad time in his life.