The Perils of Cupid takes in the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles standalone episodes of, Vienna, November 1908 and Florence, May 1908. I’ve covered the stupidity of George Lucas welding unrelated episodes together to make movie-length features in my earlier My First Adventure and Passion for Life comments, and I swear I’ll stop going on about it in one of these reviews. It’s just so agonising, however, particularly in something like what we’re looking at today, where the first part is pretty much OK, but the second part is absolutely dire. Compounding this is the second part has barely anything to do with Indy at all.
Let’s get this over with. The Vienna, November 1908 segment of The Perils of Cupid sees Indy fall in love with Princess Sophie of Hohenberg – the daughter of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. Yes, the guy whose assassination caused WW1. So, similar to meeting T.E. Lawrence before he was famous; before he was, “Lawrence of Arabia” back at the start of the series, Indy gets to interact with Franz Ferdinand some five-plus years before the big moment in Sarajevo that will change the world and start a war that Indy will fight in. Franz Ferdinand even tells Indy that one day he’ll be a great soldier. A bit chilling.
The “romance” between these kids who aren’t even 10 years old yet is fairly sweet and well handled. Indy’s attempts to see Sophie one last time after the two get into trouble for disappearing on their carers (a trope that’s all too familiar in these early episodes of the show), no matter how far-fetched, allows us to see Indy being resourceful and daring, even at a young age. One scene, however, where Indy is inside the royal palace and sneaks behind Franz Ferdinand’s back while an entire chamber orchestra can plainly see him – and no one raises the alarm – is ridiculous and should have been handled in a more clever way, but the overall sweetness of the storyline carries things along. There’s also an excellent dinner scene elsewhere in the episode where Freud, Jung, and Adler discuss the nature of love with Indy. The moment Freud suddenly dips into the Oedipus complex and Indy’s mother quickly excuses herself is hilarious to an adult, but will go shooting over the heads of any kids watching this.
All told, it’s not a classic episode of the series, but it’s light years ahead of Florence, May 1908, the second part of this movie, where the family make the acquaintance of Giacomo Puccini after a night at the opera. Indy’s father then travels further afield to lecture, leaving his family in the Italian city and leaving his wife to the advances of Puccini. Watching Puccini be an annoying sex pest to Anna Jones is boring in the extreme, and barely involves Indy at all, but at least she repels him for the most part.
Towards the end of the episode, however, she agrees to meet Puccini in a clandestine manner, shares a passionate kiss with him and they spend hours together. Sensing he is near his goal, Puccini continues to be a sex pest and the best Anna can come up with is that things are happening, “too fast” rather than what I think the audience would like to hear at that point – namely, that she’s married and has a child.
While the Anna character has been a bit vacuous up to this point in the series, one thing I don’t believe the audience would expect from her – in any way – is infidelity, yet in this episode she very nearly abandons her family to run away with Puccini. The fact she chooses her husband over Puccini at the end doesn’t really do much to satisfy the audience that Anna’s a really swell lady after all. Her abandonment of the family is portrayed as a really close-run thing and, for this, she comes across as quite unlikeable.
I do want to mention something that could have pulled this episode out of the fire… a little… if it was still present in the edit. As I’ve mentioned in the past, these movie-length adventures have unfortunately done away with the bookends to the episodes featuring a 90-something Indiana Jones. While the opening bookend had Indy discussing how he learned about physics (something that comes up in a couple of Miss Seymour’s lessons in the adventure), the closing bookend described Puccini’s, La Fanciulla del West, an opera about an American woman who gives up her home and friends for the man she loves. So clearly the writers were shoehorning in the Anna Jones romance with Puccini to set up the fact that he’d then go and write an opera about it – albeit an opera where the American woman stayed with her lover instead. That at least gives some meaning to the storyline, even if it is ick, and doesn’t have much to do with Indy. But with the bookends cut out, we lose something vital, I think, to getting something out of the story. Another solid reason against chopping up these episodes for VHS and DVD release. And don’t even get me started on how a line about going to Paris next – even though the Paris episode was used in the previous movie – was allowed in the edit. I just shake my head, honestly.
As I said at the start of this piece, the first part of this movie is pretty much OK, but the second part is absolutely dire. It’s not hard to imagine an Indiana Jones fan putting this series on for the first time and trying to get into the groove with the first two movies… but then hitting this one and wondering what on earth is going on. The first half with Indy running around in love is sweet but hardly essential viewing, then the second part with his mother being pursued around Florence and giving into a sex pest… it’s hard to imagine that fan even wanting to continue the series. I know a lot better is to come, however, so I’ll throw a 5/10 at this (largely pulled down by its second half), and move on. And you should, too.