Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #62060 in DVD
• Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish

Customer Reviews

"Call Him Doctor Jones"
Released in '84, the second installment of the Indiana Jones chronicles, `Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom' certainly matched the first film in special effects and non-stop action sequences however it didn't quite succeed at reaching that mythic level so clearly established in `Raiders of the Lost Ark'.

My Reasoning:
- The comedic elements that were there but a little more covert in the first one are overt here and a little too much so in my opinion.
- I didn't care for the side-kick addition, I found it annoying. Sorry Short Round.
- The visuals outdid the storyline, that's never a positive in my book.
- Amrish Puri was excellent as the villainous Mola Ram and any storyline involving Kali the Goddess of Destruction will capture my full attention immediately.

Great entertainment value here and it still falls earns five stars. However still not quite as good as the original.

A strange concoction
First off, there are things about this film I really love. The play between Harrison Ford and Ke Huy Quan is great, (a pity it wasn't utilized a bit further but that's the price you pay for action at every turn) as are the scenes with Kate Capshaw's Willie Scott. She provides Indy with the perfect antithesis to his stoic, cool behaviour. The spike chamber is a brilliant setpiece and something that everyone will remember once having watched it.

It's in the second half that things go a bit wrong. When Lucas described Temple Of Doom as the dark sequel to Raiders (a la Empire Strikes Back) it confused me slightly. The underlying storyline is indeed darker, as it depicts Kali worshipping, human sacrifice and children being on the receiving end of some nasty violence. However, the overriding tone of the film is more frivolous than any other Indy flick. This comes from small, incidental snippets of comedy that appear in inappropriate places and points where it just turns outright silly. Examples of which would be the gross-out comedy from the palace meal; Shortround beating up fully-grown men, etc. All this stuff would be great in a film aimed solely at kids but then this isn't. It seems that Lucas and Spielberg were trying to alleviate the darker passages of the film but instead went too far in the other direction at some points. This leaves you with a strange concoction that doesn't actually know what it wants to be. It's a bit too silly for adults and too scary for children. It is a heck of alot of fun when it does work, however.

I would argue that Raiders is in fact the darkest in the series. Whilst it has that overriding sense of fun and a good portion of humour, the violence is played much straighter and the ominous, mysterious danger of the ark permeates the film (helped no end by Williams' great score).

Indiana Jones's entry into comedy
Some movies in this world are so bad they're actually good. "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" is definitely an example.

This movie is certainly no match for its predecessor, the very serious "Raiders of the Lost Arc", but it is so hilarious it deserves 4 stars.

Will Indiana Jones stop the bad guys?

Will Kate Capshaw stop complaining for 5 minutes?