Ryan McAvoy said:
They spend half the movie trying to capture, burn alive and eat our heroes...
That is, believe it or not, part of the "cutesy". For audiences who saw a lot of adventure serials in the seventies and eighties, the "natives capturing the heroes and roasting/boiling them alive" schtick was already so worn out by 1983 that by then it was a well-understood joke, not a threat. It was a cheesy homage to the genre, like Chewie's Tarzan yell. If anyone was terrified, it was only through lack of exposure to pop culture, even kids. Scooby Doo, Gilligan's Island, The Far Side. EVERYONE knew this joke, and they'd heard it a hundred times apiece. The entire sequence was one big sight gag.
That doesn't mean any of the other arguments are less worthy, or that ROTJ can't be a fine film in spite of or because of it, but the "roasting alive=terrifying menace" thing just ain't there.