After the success of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the sequel was inevitable. George Lucas came up with the story and Steven Spielberg again directed this second adventure in the Indiana Jones serial. The high energy and joy seen in Raiders of the Lost Ark has been replaced with a darker, more serious adventure, as Indiana is charged with recovering a magic stone for a village in India who has seen drought and all of the children have gone missing. The beginning of the movie is the high point of the film, with an extravagant musical number in club Obi Wan (oh, that George Lucas and his inside Star Wars jokes), a Shanghai night club where Indiana is closing a deal over artifacts from the Chinese dynasty. Kate Capshaw is the featured singer and the latest "Indiana girl" in this film, a movie that, curiously enough, occurs BEFORE Raiders of the Lost Ark, so the suspense of Jones' fate (if there really was any) is removed, and so any potential love affairs that fail to carry over between movies. Also missing is John Rhys-Davies' Sallah and Deholm Elliot's Brody, instead, we get to see Indy's child helper, Short Round, who's job is to go into tight quarters and say "Doctor Jones" about 300 times. The plot is complicated, as I had to watch the movie a couple of times to get an idea of was actually happening, and, unlike the previous film, most of the movie happens in one place. The famous scene in this movie is the dinner at the palace, where the visitors are treated to chilled monkey brains and other appealing meals. The movie does feature a fantastic scene with an underground rail system that turns into a chase sequence that is filmed well and is enjoyable to watch. This film does not have the whimsy or innocence seen in the other two Indiana movies, and suffers because of it. While still an enjoyable film, it is the least of the three Indiana movies.
