Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom

The Temple of the Doom

Sequels are always to be compared with their prequels; and in this case ‘The Raiders of The Lost Ark’ was far better a movie than this. Being an Indian my involvement in this movie as an adventure loving viewer was more than that in the ‘The Raiders...’. Most part of the story was based in India. I had to watch this movie at any cost because of multiple reasons. One being I loved its prequel and the most important one; to understand as to why one the lady co-worker in my US office always asks me and my Indian co-workers questions like ‘Do you guys eat monkey brains for dessert? , Is Elephant considered a sacred animal for Indians? , Do you cook soups with eye balls floating in them? , What’s your religion? Are you a Christian? , Do you guys use telephone in India? Etc.”

I still remember that when the big boss at my US office was planning to book tickets for his visit to Indian office, she (lady co-worker in first paragraph) was saying this to him “Tim, Don’t eat anything there, these guys eat chilled monkey brains. I saw it in Indiana Jones movie. Don’t even go there? ” Listening to this remark of Janice, I felt amused a bit but for the most part, this remark was hurting. I was thinking, Are some of the Americans still so ignorant and closed minded or they just try to make fun of so called third world countries? Oops!!! My review here has started to sound more political than filmy. Okay …so time to come back to the track

Movie starts very promisingly with bar fight in Shanghai. Ending sequences were also very entertaining and zealous but movie has been laggard in the mid portions. There were many dialogues in Hindi and I understood all of them. Chinese kid ‘Short Round’ was refreshing. Not to forget, the movie has got some amazing sequences, like the collapsing bridge scene towards the end and the cart ride in mine. Movie had some quiet moments also unlike ‘Raiders of the lost ark’. Mola Ram’s act of taking out heart from living person must have been something very fresh and innovative at the time when this movie was made in the year 1984. I must say one of the most famous and effective villain of Indian film industry Amrish Puri played his role brilliantly in this movie. Roshan Seth was looking like Jawahar Lala Nehru, don’t know why? But that’s a fact and singer Willie Spot was beautiful and enchanting.

Overall a good movie, built around true spirit of adventure but not as good as its prequel but Harrison Ford and Dr. Indiana Jones ; both were as good as they were in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Interesting information about the movie: I must mention one interesting fact about this movie. Mark told me that this movie was very gross and violent but not so much that is could be rated ‘R and hence was rated PG. So parents demanded a new rating for movies like this and hence PG-13 rating was born. Red Dawn was the first motion picture released with the PG-13 rating, which had been created after difficulty rating Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) (Flamingo Kid, The (1984) was the first film to be *given* a PG-13 rating, but sat on the shelves for five months before being released).

My Rating: 6.7/10
Entertainment Value: 68%