Adrenaline-pumped 'Indiana Jones' is back

It has been nearly 20 years since we last cheered Indy on, but the costume still fits 66-year-old Harrison Ford, the whip still cracks, the jokes still work. "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," opening today in theaters worldwide, promises good old-fashioned adventure and delivers.

Rugged archaeologist Henry W. Jones, Jr. has been a reliable hero ever since Steven Spielberg's "Raiders of the Lost Ark" in 1981, which means he's been around since before the birth of most of today's movie-goers -- that coveted 12- to 24-year-old demographic that still lines up at multiplexes.

The release of "Crystal Skull," fourth in the Indy series, may be all about rewarding an aging fan base, and hoping that mom and dad or even grandma and grandpa can bring the younger generations to the theater and into the story. Maybe the time isn't only now, but now or never.

So, like an old rock band getting back together for another arena tour, the crew cranks up the machinery and hopes for a hit.

"Crystal Skull" opens with a hot rod racing across the desert to the strains of Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog," and we're fast-forwarded from the last time we saw Indy, in 1938, to more modern times 19 years later. The villains have changed from Nazis to Communists, but the stakes are the same as they were in "Raiders" and 1989's "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade": keep a mystical treasure with supernatural powers out of the hands of the bad guys, save the world, and have some fun doing it.

That fun includes: a return to the government warehouse where the nation's secrets are stored; the discovery of alien remains from Roswell, N.M.; yet another wildly improbable one-man escape against overwhelming odds, courtesy of a rocket sled that streaks across the desert; and an atomic bomb test in the Nevada desert, which Jones miraculously survives. Don't ask how, you wouldn't believe it.

And that's all in the first 15 minutes.

His adversary this time is the ruthless Soviet agent Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), pale-skinned and ebony-haired, eyes almost transparent and spitting cruelty.

One of the shortcomings of the earlier Indiana Jones movies was always its unremarkable antagonists -- bad guys, sure, but not great characters. Blanchett changes the dynamic, becoming that most valuable of screen villains, the one you love to hate. Is there anything this actress can't do?

But you can't get the kids into the theater unless you give them someone they can more readily relate to than cranky parental figures. That would be Shia LaBeouf, the busy young actor who has appeared in "Holes," "Disturbia" and "Transformers." Not quite 22 years old, he shows up like Marlon Brando in "The Wild One": It's an apt role model for a young punk in the mid-1950s, all about Harleys, rebellion and combs.

Naturally, he becomes an invaluable ally to Jones. And before long it's revealed (caution, plot spoiler ahead!) that he's really Jones' own son from his romance with the intrepid Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), heroine of the original Indy epic. When Allen shows up to reprise her "Raiders" role, the family unit is complete.

The only character missing that we'd really like to see is Sean Connery, who played Jones' bookish father in "Last Crusade." The Scottish actor apparently couldn't be coaxed out of retirement, and though he makes an appearance as a photograph on Jones' desk, it's only to acknowledge his absence.

But there're two hours to fill, and with veteran action movie screenwriter David Koepp ("Jurassic Park," "Mission: Impossible," "Spider-Man" and "War of the Worlds") charting the plotline, it's a wild and crazy ride.

There are Peruvian cemeteries guarded by dart-spitting troglodytes, long-lost Spanish conquistadores, Mayan temples (sic) in the South American jungle, multiple death-defying plunges over waterfalls, an insane wanderer (John Hurt) straight out of "Treasure Island," and a shameless pastiche of paranoid archaeological theories involving alien invasion and flying saucers -- but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

Suffice it to say that the result is an action film fueled by adrenaline and velocity, sparkling with quick dialogue, seasoned by in-joke asides and building into increasingly impossible situations that seem, somehow, logical. And a whole lot of fun.

Clearly, the filmmakers don't make the mistake of pretending that time hasn't passed: Harrison Ford certainly looks 20 years older. Rather, they embrace it.

What makes the character work is that Jones overcomes his limitations, working through the snake thing, and throwing himself into fights anyway. In fact, in all the movies, the bad guys who beat up Jones most thoroughly are the ones who suffer the most gruesome deaths: one got chopped up by a propeller blade (in "Raiders"), one was crushed by an ore press (in 1984's "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom").

In this movie, a hoard of army ants envelops the brute and eats him alive.

Now, that's what a good time at the movies is all about.