The great thing about the movies is that our heroes never age. We can keep going back to Chaplin, Newman, or Hepburn (either one) and, with the exception of some dated slang, they remain as fresh as the day they stepped foot in front of the camera.

So, when a bona fide classic character like Indiana Jones, last seen on the big screen 19 long years ago, makes his big return (complete with all the itinerant hype), fans of his are faced with a painful mix of emotions. Of course there’s joy: Another episode of my favourite childhood movie series is a delightful prospect. But then there’s despair: Indy may not age, but Harrison Ford does... and if Indiana Jones is old, that means I’m getting old, too. No, seriously: At 65, Harrison Ford now is a senior citizen who qualifies for a pension.

Fortunately, no one involved with this production doesn’t realize its star is getting a little too long in the tooth for this stuff, and the ‘grandpa’ jokes come pretty fast and furious in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Ford takes it all in his stride, of course. He’s a consummate professional, and if you paid me the kind of money he must be getting for this movie you could crack wise at my expense all day long.

The said wisecracks come over the course of a little more than two hours, as Indiana finds himself out of the 1930s and World War II and into the Cold War in 1957. The red scare is on high alert and, instead of Nazis, he now battling Russkis. We meet his nemesis in the first sequence (historically where some of the best action in each of the previous films takes place, and that’s also true here), a severe Soviet named Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), who has kidnapped and hauled Indy to Area 51 so he can find a mysterious box secreted away in a warehouse there. And you needn’t be a conspiracy theorist to deduce what some might be searching for down the road from the atomic testing ground; this especially after we learn of Irina’s interest in forbidden knowledge and otherworldly psychic powers.

But before we make it back to X Files territory, Indy ventures way down south, on an adventure that takes him into Peru and the Amazon basin as he hunts for the legendary Crystal Skull, which offers untold power to whoever returns it to its rightful home. Too bad that Indy’s old pal, Oxley (John Hurt), the one guy who seems to know where to find it has gone totally insane along the way.

Along for the ride is young Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf), a ’50’s greaser writ large whose purpose for appearing here should be painfully obvious to anyone who has bothered to read this far.

In the end, Irina will make her return to go face to face with Indy, and we’ll have a lot of great chases, some impossible feats of physics and physicality, and some of the usual leaps of logic that both casual moviegoers and die-hard fans won’t have trouble accepting on face value. Despite Indy’s age, this is a grand old adventure, and it goes down easily with action, sight gags, references to prior episodes, and one-liners galore. And God bless Karen Allen, who reprises her role as the hard-drinking Marion Ravenwood, though she’s clearly sobered up a bit since 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Despite its many plusses though, the movie isn’t without its problems, many of which are pretty obvious if you take away the first part of the title. Would you go see a movie just called The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Seriously, it sounds like it ought to star Casper Van Dien. Despite all attempts to make this into an epic story, the adventure becomes more of an eye-roller the longer it goes on. Sure, the Indiana Jones movies can often fall into high camp, but this one is just too far over the top. The ending will be as controversial as any you’re likely to get into an internet message board flame war over this year. No, not every adventure can end with the discovery of the Ark of the Covenant, but with this iffy finale, one can’t help but feel like we’ve lost some of Indy’s best adventures to time, never to be recovered.

In the final analysis, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is at least as good as the kind-of-silly Temple of Doom. I guess the best recommendation I can ultimately offer is this: As I write this review a couple of days after seeing the movie, I’m still humming the theme song.

Christopher Null