ARTS Friday, May 25, 1984 Page 8 Doomed to succeed 0 0 Harrison Ford (left) stars as archeologist/adventurer Indiana Jones in 'In- Kate Capshaw (center) and Ke Huy Quan (right) also star as allies of Jones diana Jones and the Temple of Doom's prequel to 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.' as he again tempts fate at a strange temple in India. By Richard Campbell WAS IT WORTH the three-year wait? Was it worth standing in the rain for an hour to attend the Ann Arbor midnight premiere? Was it worth the $4.50 ticket price? You betcha. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, whatever its minor faults, has more fun, more talent, and more ad- venture for your movie dollar than any other film likely to be released this summer (and that includes Gremlins). As Steven Spielberg's latest attempt to put the fun back into movies, Temple of Doom may not explore the most im- portant issues of life, but it does over- whelmingly succeed ina genre that baf- fles lesser talents. If you want a quick education in making movies, simply go and see any Spielberg flick. The now-not-so-young boy wonder is a master at moving the camera, in-frame compositions, dynamic blocking,. lighting, and editing. Even when another director is able to get a good cast and script together, it is Spielberg's control of the medium that sets his films apart and generates such audience enthusiasm. For anyone that has seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, the plot of Temple of Doom won't be too surprising. The film opens with Indiana barely escaping from one predicament, follows him as he is persuaded to sear- ch for a lost relic, continues as he gets into a bunch of trouble, and then ends with his triumph. Within this generic . formula, however, Spielberg and producer/writer George Lucas have managed to pack enough adventure to fill a dozen average adventure pictures. Yet although half of these escapades areic patently unrealistic, they create a fic- tional world where the extraordinary becomes commonplace, where heroes beat the bad guys only through the grace of god, and where the understan- ding of love and mystery is the ultimate triumph. Indiana Jones is set apart from the majority of movie heroes because he is not an omniscient protagonist such as James Bond. Jones almost never knows what is going on. We can identify more easily with his struggles than we can with the never nonplussed secret agent. As variously underplayed and overacted by Harrison Ford, Jones succeeds in spite of himself, through feisty determination and brains rather than suave superficiality. Temple of Doom outdoes Raiders in terms of wild, madcap fun and thrills, but in its attempt to add depth to the plot, sacrifices clarity for complexity. After the noisy Nazis of Raiders, Spielberg gave us the quiet warmth of E.T. and the "Kick the Can" segment of Twilight Zone. The world's most suc- cessful director has combined those two textures in Temple of Doom, presenting us an Indiana Jones who decides to rescue both a stolen artifact and children kidnapped for slave labor. This sentimentality mixes sur- prisingly well with Indy's character, but causes an uneven tempo in the third-quarter of the film. Jones' moral descision was made at the beginning of the film, yet Spielberg constructs a melodramatic scene near the end that amounts to little more than a recap and thus rings a tad hollow. But, nobody attends an Indiana Jones adventure to examine its morality. If Raiders was a whirlwind of excitement, Temple of Doom may just give you a heart attack. When people say this film is non-stop entertainment, they mean continuous, no-holds-barred, faster- than-a-speeding-bullet fun. Not even the few sedate scenes of plot ex- planation are free from some sort of humor or visual joke. From the opening sequence with its intricately edited and choreographed dance-fight to the final roller-coaster of a chase through a mine, Temple of Doom never stops. Though the film is no more violent than Raiders, the thrills and chills are greater. It's a great summer escape pic and a vivid example of what a generic film looks like when made by masters of the medium 0 Spielberg ... directing a classic