Like many other members of my generation, I grew up with Indiana Jones. Along with the Star Wars trilogy, the films about the dashing, whip-cracking, snake-fearing archaeologist who was named after the dog were three of my favorite movies (yes, I'm one of those poor bastards who drank all the George Lucas Kool Aid he was given and then asked for more), and I still think they're some of the greatest action movies ever made. So you can imagine I was pretty excited about the prospect of a new entry in the series, especially with so many of the old crew back: Harrison Ford as Indy, Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood (you remember, from Raiders?), Steven Spielberg as director, and of course George Lucas as writer (Lucas wrote the story with Jeff Nathanson, and David Koepp took care of the actual screenplay).

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is set in 1957, 19 years after the previous film—a fact that it takes some pains to establish. Indy, you see, likes Ike. Also, not only is he facing off against the Commies now instead of the Nazis, he also has Red Scare paranoia to worry about, not to mention the nuclear bomb, and a greaser named Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf), who arrives complete with a leather jacket, a motorcycle, and a serious obsession with his hair. But before Mutt even shows up, we learn that a lot has happened to Indy in those intervening years. First of all, he's gotten a lot older. Seriously, when did Harrison Ford get so old? Also, he lost a few of his loved ones, became a decorated war hero, and picked up a sidekick named Mac (Ray Winstone). He and Mac get kidnapped by an evil Russian woman named Spalko (Cate Blanchett, sporting a rather outrageous Natasha-style accent), who demands that they help her find a mysterious artifact. After escaping from Spalko and surviving the film's first couple crazy action sequences, Indy meets the young Mutt, who asks for his help. Seems Mutt's father figure, another archaeologist and an old colleague of Indy's named Oxley (John Hurt), has been kidnapped (there's a lot of that going around) along with Mutt's mother, and the only thing that can save them is if Indy will follow the clues left behind by Oxley and find the crystal skull, an artifact which, if returned to a legendary city, will supposedly give one unimaginable power.

I won't go into any more detail about the story, for fear of spoiling it for you, but really there's not much more to it than that. Like most of the Indiana Jones movies, Skull is just a series of fantastic fight scenes and action sequences held together by the barest of plots. But even with the plot as simple as it is, it makes a lot less sense than those of the previous movies. It introduces ideas (like Spalko's psychic abilities) and then never goes anywhere with them; it has an inexplicable obsession with animals (seriously, what's with all the shots of groundhogs at the beginning of the film? And why do the monkeys love and protect Shia LaBeouf as if he's Tarzan?); what happens during the climactic sequence is mostly nonsensical; the thing with the waterfalls is just dumb; and the happy ending is so ridiculously happy that it's almost impossible to swallow.

Speaking of impossible to swallow, although the Indiana Jones series has always featured deeply mystical and magical plot elements, this entry takes things in a particularly odd and hard to believe direction, and introduces creatures and ideas that seem quite out of place in an Indiana Jones movie. It doesn't help that these things are introduced and explained with some truly terrible dialogue and even some pretty poor acting. Ford, for instance, definitely phones it in in the opening scenes, although he does get better as the film goes on. (To my shock and surprise, I found that some of the best acting comes from LaBoeuf, whose Mutt is one of the more likable characters.) Part of the reason the first three movies are so entertaining is that the silly plots are accompanied by a powerful atmosphere of awe and mystery, and by great dialogue spoken by wonderful, well-acted characters. Skull mostly lacks these things.

Having said all that, I'm happy to add that Skull still manages to be a pretty darned entertaining film. There are plenty of laughs (the bit with the snake is particularly hilarious) and many thrilling action sequences—especially the one that opens with Mutt and Indy starting a fight at a local watering hole and then turns into a car and motorcycle chase across the college campus. The film sometimes succeeds rather well in its attempts to establish our motley crew of heroes as a kind of squabbling family. There's also a really fantastic scene, in which Spalko describes her dream of how Russia will use the crystal skull to secretly and subtly transform the minds of her enemies, that works as a brilliant metaphor for the West's worst nightmares about Communism. And of course it's great to see Indy out there again with his hat and whip, crawling through cobweb-infested passageways, avoiding perilous traps, and activating ancient mechanisms in order to find his way to mysterious treasures.

Still, nostalgia can only get you so far, and it's hard to understand why Lucas and Spielberg threw away so many screenplays written by so many talented folks (including M. Night Shyamalan and Frank Darabont) to finally settle on one as clumsy, corny, confused, and hard to believe as this one. You'd think that taking more time to develop a movie would only make it better in the long run, but that rarely seems to be the case. The word is that if this film does well, we could see another Indiana Jones movie soon. Here's hoping the production process for that one will be short and sweet.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opens tonight at midnight at the UA Riverview and The Bridge.

Image via Internet Movie Poster Awards Gallery