Remember in my movie when I said a strength of the Indiana Jones trilogy is the mostly consistency of quality in all three movies? I added “mostly” due to Temple of Doom, a sequel with some great scenes and some awful ones as well.

The opening sequence doesn’t help much. We get to see a song and dance number sung badly by an annoying woman who unfortunately teams up with Indy and a really cool Japanese kid to rescue Indian children from a hellish mine. She whines the whole time, isn’t funny, and is only good at screaming. The Japanese kid on the other hand… Wow! His lines are very awful, but remain hilarious at the same time. This kid was also in Goonies, discussed in our Extreme Movie Watching section. As an example, Indy and the annoying woman fall into a car driven by the kid. The kid spouts out, “No time for love, Dr. Jones!”

To be fair, there are some decent scenes in this movie. A dinner full of monkey brains is pretty cool as is the mine cart sequence at the end. Seeing Harrison Ford act Satanic is a treat as well. But all the scenes around the good stuff are awful—the woman complaining, antics with an elephant, and an extremely fake waterfall sequence. Watch Temple of Doom if you’re a fan of the series, or if you’re in the mood for a mediocre action movie.

I give Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom **1/2 out of ****.