Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

“Everything feels the same,” boasts George Lucas of the new Indy movie. Too true

I can’t remember a time when so much talk about the cinema was dominated by the age of its leading men. The sixties brigade are everywhere. Sylvester Stallone, 61, has revived Rambo; De Niro, 64, and Pacino, 68, are churning out films, sometimes together; and now along comes Harrison Ford, 65, back in the role of Indiana Jones. We ooh and ahh, saying how great they look for their age, while the ageing women of Hollywood are subjected to surgery, sneers or silence.

The question is, why has this film been made? It can’t be the money. Steven Spielberg and co claim they did it because fans wanted another Indy film. Nonsense: fans would like another Jaws by Spielberg, but they won’t be getting it. No, those involved are having a midlife movie crisis. Both Spielberg and Ford need a big hit. After all, these are the men who created the event movie back in the 1970s and have been gradually fading from view ever since. So, it’s come-back time. For fans, the news is good: it’s an entertaining if uninspired film that delivers what you’d expect. Whether younger viewers will go for it is another matter, but for those who saw the trilogy the first time around, it’s a cue to relive a past when we watched films that were in turn nostalgic for the past.

The last time we saw Indiana Jones, the world was on the brink of war. Now, it’s 1957. It’s a decade of teenage innocence and adult anxiety: Elvis and the bomb, hot rods and the cold war. The villains are a brigade of Russians who want to rule the world through mind control. But I suspect, for the liberal-minded Spielberg, the real villains are the American forces of anticommunism. It’s their hysteria that costs Jones his teaching job and sets him off on his latest adventure.

It seems curious that, in the atomic age, Indiana Jones is charging off to save the world from a communist plot to grab an ancient crystal skull. Spielberg is suggesting that the premise of the cold war was as absurd as the premise of his film. Unfortunately, this one adheres to the old formula: exposition followed by action, followed by exposition, and so on. I wish Spielberg and his screenwriter, David Koepp, had loosened up a bit and not made it quite so formulaic. At times, it’s like watching every Indiana Jones movie you’ve ever seen – and films inspired by them, such as The Mummy.

That, apparently, is the point. The producer, George Lucas, has even boasted:

“The style is the same, the humour is the same. Everything feels the same.” You can say that again, George. There is even the familiar Spielberg theme of the fractured family. Kingdom of the Crystal Skull self-consciously offers the pleasure of watching a reunion of sorts. As soon as Indiana’s old love, Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), turns up, they are bickering as in days of old. The subsequent action is centred on the “family” they make up, with Shia LaBeouf as the surly teenager, Mutt – who rides in from nowhere on a motorbike – as they are chased across two continents by the Russians, led by Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett).

The effect is to turn Jones into an action family-man hero, which diminishes the cynical, loner side of his character. He gains love, but loses his romantic appeal. And where is the wisecracking Jones of old? The film is never as funny as it should be. The best joke is one, I suspect, many English audiences won’t even get. When asked by a baddie for his last words before his death, Jones replies: “I like Ike?” – Dwight Eisenhower’s 1950s campaign slogan. And Blanchett’s performance as Irina Spalko is a missed opportunity. With her bobbed hair and black leather gloves, she has the look of a great evil lesbian dominatrix (which men like me find irresistible). Unfortunately, she plays the role straight – in both senses of the word – and is never a strong enough presence as a central baddie.

The plot seems a little safe, too, as if the film’s makers were so aware of people’s expectations, they were scared to try something new. So, we get the sensational action opening, designed to prove Ford can still do his own stunts. Bless. But no sooner is that ordeal over than Jones survives a nuclear blast by hiding in a lead-lined fridge. It undermines what follows. For, if he can survive a nuclear bomb, then commies, red ants, quicksand and Joe McCarthy should be a breeze.

Never mind. Spielberg has set out to make his film look as old-fashioned as possible. He refuses to play the game of modern action films by pandering to short attention spans or piling on the CGI tricks. He has said: “I believe in practical magic, not digital magic” – which is curious, because the big dramatic ending is a series of CGI tricks. His approach here is what I call the eat-your-greens school of film-making: now, children, if you sit through long and tedious passages of archeological mumbo jumbo and silly folklore, you will be rewarded with big helpings of action to follow. Unfortunately, the screenplay lacks the element of surprise or Jones’s clever way of getting out of tricky situations – it’s all bish, bash and bosh. That would be fine, but there is something missing at the heart of this film. It’s that heroic moment when action, music and performance all come together to create the perfect goose pimple. Yes, Indiana Jones is back. But where is our hero of old?