Roger Ebert's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Review

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Posted by Brett (Maverick) Lambert from 209.5.179.23 on November 07, 1999 at 17:00:40:

As for as I know, this review isn't available to read on the internet
(Ebert's site only has movies archived from 1985 onwards), so I
decided to post the ToD review for those to read. I'm mainly putting
this up for those who did not like the sequel. Ebert however
absolutely loved it. Now I doubt this review will change the minds of
those who didn't care for ToD, but perhaps it could shed some light on
some of the merits of the movie. Anyways, I 100% agree with Ebert
here, and he does an excellent job backing himself up. Well, enjoy:


Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
US (1984): Adventure
Roger Ebert Review: 4.0 stars out of 4

118 min, Rated PG, Color, Available on videocassette and laserdisc

Steven Spielberg's INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM is one of the
greatest Bruised Forearm Movies ever made. You know what a Bruised
Forearm Movie is. That's the kind of movie where your date is always
grabbing your forearm in a viselike grip, as unbearable excitement
unfolds on the screen. After the movie is over, you've had a great
time but your arm is black-and-blue for a week. This movie is one of
the most relentlessly nonstop action pictures ever made, with a
virtuoso series of climactic sequences that must last an hour and
never stop for a second. It's a roller-coaster ride, a visual
extravaganza, a technical triumph, and a whole lot of fun. And it's
not simply a retread of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, the first Indiana
Jones movie. It works in a different way, and borrows from different
traditions.
RAIDERS was inspired by Saturday afternoon serials. It was a series of
cliff-hanging predicaments, strung out along the way as Indiana Jones
traveled from San Francisco to Tibet, Egypt, and other romantic
locales. It was an exotic road picture. INDIANA JONES mostly takes
place on one location, and belongs more to the great tradition of the
Impregnable Fortress Impregnated. You know the kind of fortress I'm
talking about. You see them all the time in James Bond pictures. They
involve unbelievably bizarre hideaways, usually buried under the
earth, beneath the sea, on the moon, or inside a volcano. They are
ruled over by megalomaniac zealots who dream of conquest, and they're
fueled by slave labor. Our first glimpse of an Impregnable Fortress is
always the same: An ominous long shot, with Wagnerian music, as
identically uniformed functionaries hurry about their appointed tasks.
The role of the hero in a movie like this is to enter the fortress,
steal the prize, and get away in one piece. This task always involves
great difficulty, horrendous surprises, unspeakable dangers, and a
virtuoso chase sequence. The very last shots at the end of the
sequence are obligatory: The fortress must be destroyed. Hopefully,
there will be great walls of flame and water, engulfing the bad guys
as the heroes race to freedom, inches ahead of certain death.
But enough of intellectual film criticism. Let's get back to Indiana
Jones. As TEMPLE OF DOOM opens, Indiana is in a nightclub somewhere in
Shanghai. Killers are after him. He escapes in the nick of time,
taking along a beautiful nightclub floozy (Kate Capshaw), and
accompanied by his trusty young sidekick, Short Round (Ke Huy Quan).
Their getaway leads them into a series of adventures: A flight over
the Himalayas, a breathtaking escape from a crashing plane, and a
meeting with a village leader who begs Indiana to find and return the
village's precious magic jewel—a stone which disappeared along with
all of the village's children. Indiana is a plucky chap and agrees.
Then there's a dinner in the palace of a sinister local lord. The
dinner scene, by the way, also is lifted from James Bond, where it's
an obligatory part of every adventure: James is always promised a sure
death, but treated first to an elegant dinner with his host, who
boasts of his power and takes inordinate pride in being a
sophisticated host. After Indiana and Willie retire for the night,
there's the movie's only slow sequence, in which such matters as love
are discussed. (Make some popcorn.) Then the movie's second half opens
with a breathtaking series of adventures involving the mines beneath
the palace—mines that have been turned into a vision of hell.
The set design, art direction, special effects, and sound effects
inside this underground Hades are among the most impressive
achievements in the whole history of Raiders and Bond-style thrillers.
As dozens of little kids work on chain gangs, the evil maharajah keeps
them in slavery by using the sinister powers of the missing jewel and
its two mates. Indiana and his friends look on in astonishment, and
then Indiana attempts to steal back the jewel. Some of the film's
great set pieces now take place: Human victims are lowered into a
subterranean volcano in a steel cage, weird rituals are celebrated,
and there is a chase scene involving the mine's miniature railway.
This chase has to be seen to be believed. Spielberg has obviously
studied Buster Keaton's THE GENERAL, that silent classic that solved
the obvious logistic problem of a chase on railway tracks (i.e., what
to do about the fact that one train seemingly always has to be behind
the other one). As Indiana and friends hurtle in the little
out-of-control mine car, the pursuers are behind, ahead, above, below,
and beside them, and the scene will wring you out and leave you
breathless. INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM makes no apologies
for being exactly what it is: Exhilarating, manic, wildly imaginative
escapism.
No apologies are necessary. This is the most cheerfully exciting,
bizarre, goofy, romantic adventure movie since RAIDERS, and it is high
praise to say that it's not so much a sequel as an equal. It's quite
an experience. You stagger out with a silly grin—and a bruised
forearm, of course.

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