Luckily, he absolutely does justice to the characters. Ray Winstone, as Indy's greedy sidekick Mac, looks right at home in this universe, and Shia LaBeouf, if you'll forgive the cliché, really does breathe some fresh life into the franchise. He plays Mutt Williams, a young greaser who comes to Indy for help when his mother goes missing in the jungles of South America. If you've been following the marketing for the film at all, you might guess that his mother turns out to be Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), the original love interest from Raiders of the Lost Ark. I'm happy to report that both Marion and Indy himself are pitch-perfect.

That's thanks principally to Allen and Harrison Ford, of course. Ford brings his A-game after a full decade of mostly sleepwalking through roles, and Allen, with an ear-to-ear smile, just looks like she's having a blast being there again. Bringing her back was probably the single smartest decision in the entire film; Marion was the perfect original romantic foil -- the next two movies had glaringly weaker female characters -- so watching the two of them play off each other once again isn't only nostalgia at its best, it's a lot of fun on its own terms, too.

Unfortunately, the climax basically consists of lots of expensive special effects happening while Indy and the gang stand back and watch. That's how a lot of big blockbusters tend to end these days, and it's increasingly troubling given that we're dealing with Spielberg, who should know better. Give me a hero who's actually proactive over a million-dollar CGI shot any day.

That's another thing -- Spielberg has bragged that most of the effects in this film are CGI-less. I'm no expert, but there's a lot of CGI in this film. And frankly, many scenes as a whole look oddly fake; cinematographer Janusz Kaminski overdoes it with the hazy, soft-lit backgrounds, while in one establishing shot of a graveyard, it's embarrassingly obvious that we're looking at a miniature. If these quirks were done to mimic the style of the original films, it would be understandable, perhaps welcome, but they're not.

But let's step back and relax. Impossible as it is to watch this film without constantly comparing it to the past, if you do, you'll discover a well-above-average adventure yarn; kids who don't know the previous films may discover the same sense of wonder that I did the first time I saw Raiders. Watching this with an overly critical eye will fuel your nitpicky-fanboy inclinations, but it means you might miss some truly thrilling action sequences, like a swordfight atop moving vehicles, or -- in true Indiana Jones-style gross-out fashion -- the attack of millions of man-eating ants.

Unevenness aside, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull ...