First, a belated apology—to my parents. That kneed-in bedroom wall? Almost certainly the result of heroic vine-swinging en route to ancient Peruvian treasures. I’m also sure I rolled under our descending garage door one too many times for comfort.

Raiders of the Lost Ark had that kind of effect on boys in the summer of 1981. The movie’s two chief magicians, director Steven Spielberg and cowriter-producer George Lucas, were quick to give credit to the 1930s cliff-hangers that inspired them. But taking hold was something far more insidious: the power of the new, Rube Goldbergian blockbuster and the idea, Spielberg’s most significant, that simple pleasures are enough.

Sometimes they are, provided you’re still a kid: There’s much to dig (archaeologically speaking) in this massively anticipated sequel, especially during its first hour. Best of all is the spectacle of Harrison Ford’s craggy, iconic hero, returning to the fold nearly 20 years after galloping into the sunset in 1989’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. (Some would call this turn “tomb raiding”; they’ll be missing out on Ford’s loosest work in years.)

Wisely if unavoidably, this new chapter is set after a similar time span has elapsed, in nuke-panicked 1957, allowing Ford to make effective use of his premature Gary Cooper scowl. “I like Ike!” the professor-adventurer spits in the face of nefarious Soviet babe Irina Spalko (Blanchett, sporting a cartoonishly fun Natasha accent), who’s busy busting into a top-secret New Mexico hangar in search of one of those creepy unmarked alien crates. In the first 15 minutes alone, Indiana survives her tongue-lashings and gunfire, and even a disturbingly realistic mushroom cloud, painting the retro anxieties of the movie in strokes broader than even John Williams’s thundering score does.

The plot of The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (credited to Lucas and Jeff Nathanson) has been under wraps for years. But it will come as no surprise that there actually is a kingdom in which there are crystal skulls. Blame Lucas, green lighter of Jar Jar Binks, for these vaguely Donnie Darko–like craniums, linking the series’ quasimysticism to Roswell and X-Files paranoia. Since the prospect of Comrade Spalko in possession of hypnotic skulls is too much to bear, Dr. Jones heads to South America to find them before she does, after being picked up by a Brando-esque greaser called “Mutt” (LaBeouf), who steals him away from his New England University via a snazzy motorcycle chase.

The problems of the movie begin here, subtly but assuredly, in ways that Spielberg has never encountered before. How is it, for instance, that a director so reliably attuned to banter can suddenly become so deaf to sass? LaBeouf is quickly stranded in an interzone between his natural doofusy charm (visible even in Disturbia) and Mutt’s gearhead surliness, which never clicks or is even employed plot wise. Blanchett, too, is given little opportunity to flash the intelligence that would make her a proper antagonist, while the much-hyped return of Raiders’ sparky Karen Allen (promoted to Spielbergian supermom status) only adds up to a lot of hand-wringing. Doesn’t she deserve at least one scene in which to hold her own? And why cast velvet-voiced John Hurt as a dotty academic only to have him be largely catatonic and mute?

These drawbacks would be bad enough, but for the first time in his career, Spielberg also seems to be lacking in heart, and governed by contrivance. (And I don’t mean “heart” like Temple of Doom, which certainly had plenty of them to go around.) You begin to notice cinematographer Janusz Kaminski’s lacquered, soundstagey compositions, and wish that the characters were better illuminated from within—with cunning, wit, even a bad Hawksian joke or two.

That’s not to say all is lost. If you ever desired swarms of computer-generated red ants, now’s your time. But the movie is all too often free of physical heft or gravity (an ironic indictment of the digital industry Lucas is responsible for), especially during a passive, Close Encounters–style climax that triggers an “Um, wow?” in lieu of actual catharsis. Indy & Co. does less puzzle solving, less escaping. You feel it—or rather, you don’t. Jeopardy is somehow absent. The worst that can be said of Crystal Skull is that it won’t be inspiring any youthful vine-swinging. A shame, really.

Director: Steven Spielberg

Time Out rating: 3/6

Source: Time Out New York Issue 660: May 22–28, 2008