After arriving in India, Indiana Jones is asked by a desperate village to find a mystical stone. He agrees – and stumbles upon a secret cult plotting a terrible plan in the catacombs of an ancient palace.
Again you will savor the Indiana Jones schizophrenia: by day a bow-tied, bespectacled archaeologist; by night a resourceful swaggerer, whom Ford brings to life as a modern blend of Bogie and the Duke, with just a glint of misfit psychopathy in his eyes.
– Richard Corliss,
TIME Magazine,
13 Jan 2010
rotten:
It's not the darker turn that makes The Temple of Doom uncomfortable at times; it's its mean-spiritedness.
– James Berardinelli,
ReelViews,
10 Jun 2008
rotten:
Pic comes on like a sledgehammer, and there's even a taste of vulgarity and senseless excess not apparent in Raiders.
– Todd McCarthy,
Variety,
5 May 2008
rotten:
The film betrays no human impulse higher than that of a ten-year-old boy trying to gross out his baby sister by dangling a dead worm in her face.
– Dave Kehr,
Chicago Reader,
5 May 2008
fresh:
Set years before the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is sillier, darkly violent and a bit dumbed down, but still great fun.