Discussions of Spielberg's unapologetic sentimentalism often prompt apologists to point to "Jaws." Why don't they ever mention the superior "Raiders of the Lost Ark"? After the failure of "1941," I suspect Spielberg became a little bitter and a lot less preoccupied what the audience would think, if only because I can't think of any better way to explain "Raiders," a movie so lacking in polish and focus that it wouldn't be released by a major studio today without first being ruined in post. There's a great feeling to it that we should attribute to Spielberg's recklessness and freedom, an attitude which happens to manifest itself in a diminished interest on his part in obscuring his own sleight of hand, revealing the clearest window into his mind to date and the great extent of his fluency in the language of cinema better than ever before or since. The degree to which this offsets his lack of real insight into human behavior/emotion is a discussion for another time.
"Temple of Doom" never had a chance of matching its predecessor. Not even someone as talented as Spielberg can recreate the kind of wild inspiration that made "Radiers" so great. Instead of xeroxing its template as would a lesser director, he abandons its realtive genre reverie for sustained white knuckle tension I won't compare to anything else for fear of understating or overstating the case.
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