Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984)
Hold on to your potatoes! Indy's back, and this time he's got a sidekick. Joining Dr. Jones on his whip-cracking adventure is 12-year-old Short Round (Ke Huy Quan). Also tagging along is club singer Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw). Indiana avoids an attempt on his life in Club Obi Wan, escaping the ensuing brawl with Willie and jumping into a taxicab driven by Short Round. Although it seems they have managed to get a flight to safety, it turns out that their escape plane has also been sabotaged, and they end up leaping out of it (in a raft), sliding down a mountain, over its edge, into white water rapids, and finish up in an Indian village. Sadly, the village has been ravaged, and both a sacred stone, and the village's children, have been stolen. Indiana is asked to recover the stone from Pankot Palace. And presumably to recover the children too. But I think he's more interested in the stone.
Indiana, Short and Willie make their way to the palace. And, it quickly becomes apparent that most of the people in the palace are nutcases, or evil, or both. They eat strange food and engage in bizarre rituals in an underground temple below the palace. The Temple of Doom I assume. The stolen sacred stone appears to be one of five and when placed into close proximity of each other, their diamonds glow and unleash some sort of power. The members of the cult only have three of the stones, but they believe that if they locate the other two, this will give them ULTIMATE POWER!!! (if only words could echo, I'd be making them echo here).
It also turns out that the stolen children are in the temple too. They've been brainwashed and are being used as slaves to try to find the missing stones. Of course, the cultists are in for a rude awakening due to the presence of Indy, Short Round and, to a very small extent, Willie, in their dingy doom temple. And we're in for a rollercoaster - literally at one point - of action as we see the threesome do battle against the forces of evil.
Although this is the second film in the franchise, it's actually a prequel to 1981's Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's darker in tone and more violent than Raiders, and it's partly responsible for the US introducing the PG-13 age rating. The action is relentless, with scene after scene of threat, danger and amazing escapes. It features lots of gross-out squirmy scenes - food takes the form of living beetles and monkey brains, the floor of the underground tunnels is literally a surface of crawling bugs, there's the famous heart-removal moment, followed by a human sacrifice. Kids are flogged, fights are intense. And there's an absolutely stunning minecart chase.
Willie Scott plays the inevitable love interest, although the chemistry between her and Indiana isn't really too evident. Her role in the film amounts to little more than an annoying, high maintenance damsel in distress. There is no depth given to her character at all. But, she clearly impressed director Steven Spielberg, as she would later become his wife. Short Round is a much more well-rounded character. Initially it seems that having a kid as a sidekick is a bit of a gimmick, but it actually works quite well. Kind of wish he'd pushed the Maharaja kid though.
As well as action, we have humour. Indy has his witty one-liners, Willie has an issue with an elephant, but Short Round seems to steal the show with some of the more memorable lines of the entire movie.
The movie is a thoroughly enjoyable thrill ride. Some parts of the it feel a bit far-fetched, whereas Raiders of the Lost Ark was a bit more grounded in reality, with real-life antagonists, rather than fantastical and clichéd cults and tribes. And, perhaps it could have done with a bit of a breather from the action from time to time. Sometimes films need to ebb and flow a little. Is there such a thing as action exhaustion? And if you're into your 1930s musicals, there's a song and dance number to open the whole thing off. Of course, you could just watch a 1930s musical if that's your thing, or watch this you're looking for adrenaline-filled bug-crunching madness.