The Great Movie Review: The Temple of Doom

Talk about your let downs right? I know I made it out be all kinds of mind blowingly coolness through all the movies, but I had to get you to push through. You just gotta push through the Temple of Doom. Not only is it the most ridiculous, it's also the darkest and least humorous. It's just not very fun to watch. They also made the classic kid side kick mistake. I can't decide which is more annoying Short Round or Willie (the female lead). Now, I realize that these movies are made to be an homage to the serials of the 30's, but holy cow (get it, because it was set in India) this was too much.

So let's compare Temple of Doom, henceforth referred to as Tod, with Raiders. * Spoiler Alert! In Raiders we open with a great transition from the Paramount logo to an actual mountain. We then have the exchanging/taking of an artifact. Dr. Jones is then gets into trouble and a chase scene ensues whereby he escapes by boat plane. Tod pretty copies the opening event sequence: Mountain transition, check; Priceless Artifact, check; Dr. Jones getting into trouble, double check; Chase scene that ends with Indy getting on plane; check and ... check. I don't know if it was intentional, but it happened. And if it was intentional, it probably just follows the 30's serial format even more.

So we watched Tod on Halloween. Which was my plan all along. It is so creepy. There has got to be at least one thing in this movie that makes your skin crawl, or at least throw up in your mouth a little. For me it's when they cut open the snake surprise. SURPRISE! It's live eel. Blech. And they pull out a dude's still beating heart! Think about that for a couple minutes. Or don't because it's just weird.

Valerie being our only girl this week pointed out what a terrible representation of a woman Willie, the female lead, was. She was incredibly girly, and couldn't do a thing for herself. The only helpful thing she did in the whole movie was to release the trap in the room of spikes. Which she promptly set off again. I say that, there were a couple things she did really well. You could count on her to hate everything, to whine and complain at all times, scream at everything and be a general waste of space.

I'm not going to talk about Short Round because he shouldn't have even been in the movie.

Micah grew up on these movies. Apparently he would watch them over and over, back to back as a kid. Which, to me, explains why his belt makes him feel secure and ready for anything. Need to lash yourself to something, belt. Need to beat up a bad guy, belt. Need to restrain someone, belt. Now take belt and replace it with whip. That's right, Micah is Indiana Jones.

So the next time you are looking for a movie that combines all of your favorite elements: musical numbers, gross out scenes, unnecessary heart surgery and wacky mine cart rides just remember Tod.





















Also, Dan Aykroyd (yes it is really spelled that way) is in it briefly.