For the people who weren't around in 1984 and keep claiming that "Doom" was universally panned by critics, here's a review which gives it
4 out of 5 stars and calls the film a
'masterpiece'.
24 May, 1984 - The Gazette, Montreal
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Rating:
****
'Doom' is gory, but good
New Indiana Jones saga a violent masterpiece
By BRUCE BAILEY
Gazette Film Critic
With a title like
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom you know right away that this film has just
got to be pure hokum. And that's exactly what it is - cackling villains and all.
But this is high-tech, state-of-the-art hokum with an almost non-stop intensity that beats anything of this sort that has ever been seen on the screen before.
The latest effort by director Steven Spielberg and producer George Lucas is significantly faster-paced than
Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first account of the exotic cliff-hanging adventures of intrepid archeologist Indiana Jones.
Even more so than its predecessor,
Temple of Doom is built on the assumption that its audience has the attention span of chipmunks on speed. It has very few sustained conversations - but even when the characters actually do get down to a semblance of a discussion, the film-makers feel obliged to distract us with visual zingers.
As guests chat during an elegant dinner party, for example, we watch the heroine turn a whiter shade of pale as she's served eyeball soup while her fellow diners munch on beetles, down live eels cut from a snake's gullet, and dig into chilled monkey brains still sitting in hairy, grinning skulls.
The best that can be said for all that is that once kids see it, you'll never hear them complain about the school cafeteria.
Far more disturbing is the violence and for in the rest of the film. We're confronted with a still-pumping heart yanked from a man's chest just before he's set on fire, hordes of children being beaten by thugs, giant cockroaches crawling all over the heroine, and bad guys impaled, shot, falling to their deaths or flattened by a stone crusher.
Any kid who gets through it all may have to be scraped off from under his seat like so much used bubblegum.
There's no denying that, with a $27 million price tag, this film is extremely well-made, a masterpiece of editing, cinematography and special effects.
Supposedly beginning one year before the events of
Raiders of the Lost Ark, it's the story of the adventures of Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford), Shanghai nightclub singer-owner Willie Scot (Kate Capshaw) and orphan Short Round (12-year-old Saigon refugee Ke Huy Quan). Why Indiana drags them along on his airborne escape from a bunch of Chinese hoods is anybody's guess - but that's not the last time the screenwriters throw logic to the winds.
Anyway, the three of them find themselves in an Indian village that's fallen on hard times ever since of band of cultists kidnapped all their children and stole a magic sacred stone. Without too much persuasion, Indiana again enlists the company of his pals and heads off to save the day.
Along the way, of course, there's a time for a little love interest. But to say the least, feminists aren't going to be at all happy with Indy's latest lady-love.
In the last film, the heroine (Karen Allen) was a stony-willed, confident, intelligent and accomplished owner of a Nepalese bar. Her successor, Willie, is a classic flibbertigibbet, frightened of her own shadow and unduly upset whenever one of her painted fingernails gets chipped.
You almost expect her to sigh, "My hero!" when she presses into Indy for the inevitable final clinch.
Parent's guide: frequent and extreme violence and gore; very occasional mild profanity; no sexual sequences.
