WARNING: Contains spoilers.

As hinted at earlier in the week I went to the cinema for the first time in ages last Saturday.

I went to see the new Indiana Jones film. I’m a huge fan of the first two films and retain a lot of affection for The Last Crusade – in the way you might a simple but harmless relative. I’d purposefully avoided as much of the press as was conceivable given the media onslaught that surrounded the premiere and really only had one requirement: entertain me. Doesn’t seem like much to ask does it?

The film begins from the pragmatic premise that quite some time has passed since the previous three films and Dr Jones now has quite a few years under his belt but is still cracking the whip where he can. It’s the 1950s and McCarthyism is rife. Everyone is a suspected enemy of freedom, even Indy, and you’d have to be some kind of hermit not to take the somewhat unsubtle dig at naughties America. [HINT: If you want to make a political point do a film on what’s happening right NOW.]

Anyway, it’s the fifties, Indy is getting on a bit and after a falling out with his university Indy leaves for Europe. Accosted by a brash young biker by the name of Mutt Williams, and enlisted in a search for the crystal skull of the title, our hero proceeds to trek through South America followed by a mad Russian dominatrix.

I’m not going to go into the plot in anymore detail.

Suffice to say it was somewhat wasted on me as I managed to guess it in thirty seconds courtesy of accidentally seen Karen Allen on the red carpet with Harrison Ford for the premiere. Raiders of the Lost Ark was one of my favourite films as a child and as a teenager I never really got over seeing Allen’s bum in Animal House. It was not, therefore, a leap of imagination to work out why she was there.

She’s still hot.

*Coughs* Moving on…

That’s really a problem with this outing. Too many of the film’s big pops appeared on the plethora of “specials” enabling any of the audience with even the most rudimentary knowledge of film narrative to guess what’s going on. There are genuinely enjoyable moments: an attention to continuity that is quite rare in this type of franchise, intentionally funny moments, old school live action stunts and a spattering of myth.

And of course there’s the cast.

It’s quite hard to go wrong with Harrison Ford, John Hurt, Ray Winston, Cate Blanchett and Karen Allen. Even newcomer Shia LaBeouf turns in a well judged, nicely understated performance that bounces agreeably off Ford. Yet go wrongis precisely what Spielberg and Lucas manage to do: they fumble it.

First off the pacing is poor and I mean really poor. The trademark care of Raiders and Temple seems to have gone by the wayside. The script starts a few beats too late with Indy already in trouble, this continues through spluttering segues as the weak plot trundles on, never really offering the depth or texture of the early films.

Yes, Indiana Jones films are about fun, nothing more really than fluff, popcorn films to fill the void left by the death of the Saturday matinee, but that doesn’t mean they have to be bland. Those early Indiana Jones films still had an unusually gritty, flawed, hero whom you actually saw in pain, who you saw bleed, who was quite frankly a genuine everyman. That’s what made them great.

Ford does his best to inject some of this into the older Indy but the fact is that the character was irredeemably softened in Last Crusade and Lucas/Spielberg complete the castration in The Lost Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Seriously, the ending of this one had me reaching for my vomit back. It was just…lame.

I’ll be honest. I don’t think it was Spielberg that fumbled it. Yes he’s the director. Yeah he gets it wrong occasionally, yes he’s not good at every genre he tackles but the man can do action, the man can do classic matinee cinema.

No. The person whose pesky little finger marks are all over this turkey is George Lucas. From the tepid dialogue that some poor bastard has done his best to fix, to the wooden plot, it reeks of the man whose output in recent years has consisted of one script disaster after another. Remember this is the guy who had possibly the most two dimensional actor of recent years (Hayden Christensen) utter the immortal line “His fate shall be the same as ours” in Revenge of the Sith.

Lucas has done a lot of good in the world of film – much of the kit used in modern cinema exists because Lucas companies developed it. He is a solid technical film producer but as screenwriter he sucks like a Hoover. Maybe his people can no longer say no to him. Maybe not but someone should have said no to this one.

The film had heaps of potential that were ultimately wasted. At least for this reviewer. If you’ve never seen the originals then you might get a big kick out of it, you might find some of the plot turns a surprise and not find the last act so jarring. If you do then I’m pleased for you. For me I’d just like George Lucas to stop ruining my childhood films. If I hear anything about a Willow sequel I may have to give him a stern talking to with a baseball bat.