This is not your father’s Indiana Jones. Or, for that matter, the Indiana Jones of your childhood. The rush at seeing Harrison Ford once again don the iconic fedora is undeniable, but Crystal Skull never quite succeeds at replicating the experience of the earlier films. That’s a high bar, of course: Raiders of the Lost Ark is a tried-and-true classic, and The Last Crusade is a brilliant romp. At times, the Spielberg of the ’80s, full of great stunts and sharp asides, fights to escape the nuclear holocaust of special effects-laden blockbusters that have come since, but too often he is dragged into a morass of “top this” action scenes and plot that veers into the bizarre. There are a few good stunt sequences in Crystal Skull and, while the movie and Ford are enjoyable, it lacks the pure joy that informed the earlier outings and elevated them to the classic status they so rightly deserve.

Still, it may have been better than Temple of Doom.