Monday, June 09, 2008
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
***½ Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Action/adventure
Directed by: Steven Spielberg.
Starring: Harrison Ford, Kate Capshaw, Jonathan Ke Quan, Amrish Puri
I watched this on video while exercising.
This one starts out in China, then there's a Big Fight™, then a wild escape, then Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) ends up in India with a screaming lounge singer (Kate Capshaw) and a precocious kid (Jonathan Ke Quan) in tow, and they search for a lost sacred stone, running afoul of an evil warlord (Amrish Puri).
A lot of reviews complain about this sequel being "too dark." Wha?? Dark? I didn't see it. What I did see, however, was that this suffered from sequel syndrome: lots more action, throw in a babe, a kid, and an amusing animal, don't worry about the plot.
The plot, frankly, is pretty thin. It's just a series of harrowing escapes. There's nothing like the first or third movies, where there's actual story between action scenes.
I'm not sure why movie makers feel compelled to throw a kid into a movie that doesn't need it (see Herbie Goes Bananas for a horrible example), but this kid isn't actually too bad. Particularly when compared with the blonde bimbo, who's pretty much the stereotypical blonde bimbo. TSTL, and she squeals and shrieks and complains nonstop. I think she was supposed to be funny, but I found her beyond annoying (so did the boys when they watched this), and I was yelling at the bad guys to just shoot her already.
What we got instead of an archaeological puzzle was an evil overlord forcing people to work as slaves in his mines. It's not remotely as interesting or entertaining. He was just generically evil.
The action was fun, and I did enjoy what we got to see of Harrison Ford, but I'd just as soon skip this one in the re-viewings of the series.
Categories: Movies, 3.5stars, ActionAdventure
Labels: 3.5 stars, action, Movies
