Raiders of the Lost Ark became such a success it was only a matter of time before it became a franchise. The Temple of Doom was the second installment in the series. This time Jones (Harrison Ford) is out to find a stolen gem and missing children from an impoverished Indian village taken by an evil maharaja who resides at a palace. He was accompanied by Shorty (Jonathan Ke Quan) and Willie (Kate Capshaw). The screenplay was not half as good as the original.

The first thing that stands out is that the writing took a step backwards from Raiders of the Lost Ark. There Jones was partnered with Marion (Karen Allen) who was his equal in terms of toughness and willingness to fight. Here you get Willie who spends almost her entire time on screen complaining, screaming and whining. There were scenes created specifically for her to freak out like when they’re in the jungle and she runs into a bunch of animals. It gets really annoying.

When Jones and company show up at the palace there was also a lot of bad exoticization of Indian culture. They go to a feast where snakes, bugs, soup with eyeballs in it and monkey brain are served. India was still foreign enough for the writers to portray it as a very strange and odd place that a Westerner would be disgusted by. It’s very disrespectful.

Overall it seemed like The Temple of Doom was a takeoff of an old exploitation movie. Hence the dinner, the cult, etc. That makes it by far the worse out of the four Indiana Jones films. I’m still a sucker for the series so I still watch the movie when it’s on but it’s just a disappointment.
C

After not seeing this since my childhood, I'm horrified at just how bad this movie is. Cinematically, it's an inexpert play off of films of the 40s. But where those often chauvinistic leading men also carried a code of gentlemanly ethics, Jones replaces those here with the 80s bad boy qualities. In reading about how this travesty of a shaky plot riding on top of wild sexism and racism came to be, it turns out that the main co-writer of Raiders turned this job down, saying "I didn't want to be associated with Temple of Doom... I just thought it was horrible. It's so mean. There's nothing pleasant about it. I think Temple of Doom represents a chaotic period in both their [Lucas and Spielberg] lives, and the movie is very ugly and mean-spirited."

Harrison Ford has several challenges in the path of giving a great performance that can rescue this film. Despite a making fantastic entrance, the whole opening devolves into overdrawn slapstick that goes on for minutes when seconds is all that was required. The rest of the film is similarly paced. Very procedural shooting without any story or characters to care about, except Short Round. No Sallah to play off of, no Beloq to worry about. It's all "Go here, do that," gross-out sequence, fight sequence, chase sequence, and repeat. Willie Scott just screams a lot and not convincingly. The (then) 12-year-old Ke Huy Quan was marvelous as Short Round, learning his lines in English phonetically, yet dishing out great emotional energy to power up the scenes between himself and Ford. This film could have had Ewoks in it, for all I care.

[This review is of 2013 Blu-ray edition with only a Teaser and a Theatrical Trailer as Bonus Material.] I hadn't watched this movie since I bought it on LaserDisc, which I subsequently "burned" to a DVD-R. Felt it was time to upgrade to Blu-ray. In my opinion, this marked the end of the franchise in terms of items worthy of a place in my personal movie library. While pondering this BD purchase I scanned other Customer Reviews. It looks like I need to mount my steed and ride to the rescue of Dr. Jones's reputation (you're welcome, Mr. Spielberg!!).

To those who say this is "a horrible movie": Did you fail to notice that Dr. Jones puts aside (temporarily, at least) his quest for personal "Fortune and Glory" because...because why? Because he sees that hundreds of children...CHILDREN, for crying out loud!...have been kidnapped and used as SLAVE LABORERS in a mining operation. He sees they are starving, he sees them being whipped before his very eyes. This makes Indy very, very angry. Just as he despises Nazis, Indy despises those who would treat children in this manner. (Indy also hates snakes, but there I disagree with him philosophically/aesthetically. I think snakes are beautiful and magnificent! Sorry about this little digression!) Being Indiana Jones, he will not be content to start a petition demanding the release of the children. He will swing into personal action! Yay, Dr. Jones!! There is still some decency in the world after all, you see. Well, this was 1935, of course. You grasp my point, though, yes?

I understand that a just-published book by a well-known film critic posits that Mr. Spielberg has "issues with women." That this is manifested in his treatment of Kate Capshaw's character ('Willie') in this movie in particular. Yes, she is made the butt of a running series of sight gags wherein she is menaced by real dangers, with Indy dismissing her screams of terror as hysterical overreactions to being in an unfamiliar environment. You know, "typical woman stuff." But is this movie not, among other things, a wicked satire of the "Saturday morning adventure serials" of the 1930s/1940s in which, if a woman character is running from danger, we may bet she will trip and twist an ankle? So our manly hero will be forced to pluck her from her undignified situation and carry her to safety? Hmmm? Are the "set pieces"/stunt work way over the top, quite preposterous indeed? Of course they are!! Precisely because THIS IS a satire! Great Caesar's Ghost, does no one retain a sense of humor nowadays? A final note: I am not an expert on the real history of the Thugees sect, but if their leader in this story isn't one of the most effectively scary villains of 1980s filmmaking I don't know who the heck we'd substitute for him. I doff my own fedora to Dr. Jones and Steven Spielberg...Oh, right, this is a Blu-ray. The image is mostly very sharp, even in dimly-lighted scenes, and the audio will rattle your floorboards if you give it a chance. Unless you're watching it on your phone or a tablet! But why the devil would you want to do that if you're a real movie lover?!?

Not the best of the Indiana Jones series, but I liked it--decent entertainment. However, Amazon, for whatever reason, has the sound turned down. This is true on several of their other movies, too. Not all of them, but enough that it is difficult to enjoy the movie. You increase the volume to full level on Amazon and on your viewing device, as well, and the sound is still hard to hear to pick up, more particularly the voices of the actors, especially, Kate Capshaw's voice. This is distracting. Straining to hear what they are saying is annoying. I am not hard of hearing. Usually, the movies from Amazon, at full volume are too loud, unless you are in another room and just want to hear the audio. Not so with this flick. Just letting you know. Amazon needs to have enough volume that we, the viewer control it, not Amazon. Yes, very distracting. You listen to Amazon music and you can get enough volume to shake the house. This movie, audio wise is like weak tea.

Indiana Jones never gets old - I've watched the original trilogy countless times, and it's always fun every single time.

If you've never watched these movies, change that. Don't be like my mom and think these are horror movies and refuse to watch them. Sure, there are scary parts, because these movies are adventure films. But definitely not horror. :)

This movie has the stunning Kate Capshaw screaming her head off - LOL! And Harrison Ford is simply incredible in one of his iconic roles. John Williams is at the peak of his composing game as well.

The movie isn't flawless, but I love every minute of it.

I believe that the "Indiana Jones" series is the best thing that Harrison Ford ever did in his career (just my opinion) I haven't seen anything else that he's ever done that comes anywhere close to living up to them. Thoroughly entertaining and of course a little over the top nobody could do or survive the things Indiana Jones does in any of those movies but fun and exciting...and great imagination who ever wrote this stuff. Highly recommend the movie for the entire family....i do believe that every Indiana Jones movie is rated PG and on top of that I don't think you hear any profanity not even one word which today is unheard of !

Of all of the Indiana Jones movies, I actually find this one to be the weakest. Now that is a relative term, as I have given the movie 5 stars and think it is a really great time at the movies. I think this one suffers a bit from being a sequel that gives audiences exactly what they want, in other words there really is no growth such in the story, characters, etc such as we saw going from Star Wars to The Empire Strikes Back. What would I consider to be growth for these characters? Look no further than the third movie, which introduced us to Indiana Jones' dad (Sean Connery) and gave Indy a background that audiences could relate to.

I consider Indiana Jones to be the single greatest character ever put on film. The movies are episodic in nature, full of cliff-hangers and featuring many death-defying stunts and sequences. Some of what we see in the Temple of Doom stretches the limits of believable reality, ie diving out of a crashing airplane in an inflatable raft. Now I know that all of these movies feature stuff that would be at best questionable, but with some of the other big action shots, I could at least believe that maybe, perhaps it would just be possible for what I just saw to actually work. But I digress.

The Temple of Doom is chronologically the first Indiana Jones movie, set in 1935. We pick things up in a bar named "Club Obi Wan" (Star Wars reference) where Indy is negotiating with a notorious Chinese henchman over the remains of some ancient Chinese leader. We are quickly introduced to the American singer Willie Scott, played by Kate Capshaw, and things soon go south. An action-packed escape from China leads Indy, along with Willie Scott and his sidekick Short Round, to India, where they come across a village that has suffered an attack from Thuggee troops from the nearby Pankot Palace that relieved them of a rock that gave life to their region, as well as all of their children.

Great action movie with human sacrifice and some voodoo torture thrown in for good measure. The movie has some dark and disturbing moments that actually led to the creation of the PG-13 rating back in 1984 (Red Dawn was the first movie slapped with that rating).

But here is the biggest problem with the movie. Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade featured a well known villain, the Nazis. Every one can relate to those guys. We all know who Adolf Hitler was, and we all know what he wanted to do. So you have a clearly defined villain and you have Indiana Jones doing all he can to thwart their nefarious plans. But who among us know much if anything about the Thuggee? I researched them and learned that they were real, but they simply are not a known quantity. That makes it difficult to gauge their intentions and why we should be rooting so hard against them (other than they are the obligatory bad guys).

Still, it is an Indiana Jones movie. Great musical score as always by John Williams. Harrison Ford ... need I really say how awesome he is? Steven Spielberg right in the height of his career.