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.
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.
– Colin Covert,
Minneapolis Star Tribune,
28 Dec 2006
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
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:
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
fresh:
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.