This review is a little late in coming and I know you all just want to get out and see the Sex and the City movie now (or, depending on when this is published, Hancock), but I had a lot to say about the newest Indiana Jones film which took a while to say, and then even longer to go through and edit out.

There are some movies we are raised on, which through repeat viewing from an early age we associate so closely with ourselves that they come to be part of our very identity, defining and affecting us as much as any other person, event, or situation could. Sometimes it is not mere hyperbole when we tell somebody that a piece of fiction "changed my life," and such has been the case since mankind first started inventing imaginary worlds into which we could escape or go to ponder the meaning of our own world. The mere existence of the phenomenon known as the "fan" is a substantiation of the claim that fiction is as important - to many people - as the real world.

One of the films to which I owe my identity, one of the first films I truly loved and have never stopped - and will never stop - loving is Raiders of the Lost Ark. My family had a VHS copy of the film, one old enough that it had the film's original title without the Indiana Jones and stuck on. I watched it constantly between the ages of 5 and 12, to the point that I had nearly every line and every shot in the film memorized. Even now, when people recount stories of bad dating experiences, I respond, in an exaggerated English/Egyptian accent, "Bad dates!" Most of the time, no one gets it.

Please excuse me this long-winded and nostalgic introduction to my review of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, itself a long-winded title for a nostalgic film. I felt I had to give you this information in order to make up for and somehow legitimize what is going to be a very negative review of Spielberg's newest. I wanted to prove that this review is not that of someone whose cynicism blinded him, nor is it by someone whose experience of the previous Indiana Jones films was superficial and would provide the wrong perspective on the new film. No, I wanted this film to be good. I thought it could be good. Even up until two-thirds of the way through the film, I thought it would be good.

You see, I've been looking forward to Kingdom of the Crystal Skull for over 12 years. When I was 8 years old, in 1995, I was assured by a tour guide at Disney/MGM that a new Indiana Jones film was slated for release in two years. I waited eagerly. I told all my friends, and waited until 1997 was over before I started despairing (all we got in 1997 was Air Force One, a Harrison Ford vehicle which was laughably enjoyable in its own right). I gave up hope until around 4 years ago, when rumors started up again of the new film getting made after George Lucas finished ruining his other notable franchise.

Despite Lucas's absolute butchering of everything that was enjoyable about Star Wars over the past 8 years, I had hope for this one. Indiana Jones is a franchise whose best entries were infinitely better than the best Star Wars films (Please, Empire vs. Raiders? Who are you kidding?) and whose worst entries were likewise leagues above the worst Star Wars had to offer. There was something at least two of the Indiana Jones films had that no other films had, and perhaps this could be recaptured.

It turns out that this special something can't be recaptured, at least not completely. The film might be of higher quality than the former middle entry in the franchise, Temple of Doom, but the pity of both films is that they are watchable mostly by virtue of the fact that they feature Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones, so that no matter how much I dislike Temple of Doom, I will still watch it if it's on, complaining the whole time about how bad it is but unable to take my eyes off of Indiana fucking Jones. The same is the case here. I'm about to complain about Kingdom of Crystal Skull, but you should go see it anyway: it's Indiana fucking Jones.

The film opens promisingly enough, in media res like most of the other Indiana Jones films. A weathered Harrison Ford doesn't look terribly out of place in the trademark Jones getup, and he still manages the four or five amazing facial expressions off of which he has built an entire career with ease. Yes, the problem here is not Harrison Ford or his age. We have, after all, had aging heroes before. John Wayne still had it when he made True Grit at the age of 62. So the blame for the missteps of Kingdom of the Crystal Skull does not fall on Ford, who in fact does an excellent job and is, by the way, in great shape.

No, it's George Lucas and Steven Spielberg who deserve the blame for the worst parts of this film. They both have proved in recent years how out of touch they are with what made them and what makes anyone great, and this new film is no different. Let's start with the furry creatures: the film, at different parts, features ridiculous, anthropomorphized CG gophers and monkeys, which serve to not only remove all verisimilitude from the film, but also represent the kind of needless CGI Lucas always finds necessary for some reason.

These creatures are also a transparent attempt to make the film more "family friendly," though the franchise has always been family friendly not because it catered to children, but because it is so undeniably fun that parents can't help but introduce their children to the oft-violent films. The monkeys and gophers feel and look so out of place that you become convinced for a few minutes that Paramount has accidentally spliced frames from the upcoming Madagascar sequel into the film. One of the strengths of the original three Indiana Jones films, that they appeal to all ages just by virtue of what they are, is thus perverted into a weakness, as George and Steven try too hard to make the film accessible.

The furry creatures are not the only strength of the franchise that is seemingly ignored. The Indiana Jones films were carried by Harrison Ford with a limited supporting cast. In the first film, Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen, who reprises her role for the first time in Crystal Skull) as a sidekick, love interest, and damsel in distress was a necessary companion for Ford to bounce lines off of - and, enjoyably, she bounced them back. Their entertaining dynamic is recaptured in Allen's first scene in the new film, but like the rest of Indy's numerous Crystal Skull sidekicks, she soon becomes dead weight.

It seems that, fearing that a visibly aged Ford would fail to carry a film himself, the numerous writers who worked on this script over the past 20 years felt he needed a sidekick of some sort. This led to the invention of the young Mutt Williams (Shia Labeouf), one of the better ideas the film has. Somewhere along the line, however, Marion and two other fellow journeymen were added. These characters, for the most part, are a distraction, taking up screen space and time for no reason.

During a car chase through the jungle soon after she shows up, Marion disappears for a few minutes, only to reappear in her stolen Soviet amphibious vehicle when the rest are in danger of being attacked by a hoard of giant red ants (it makes sense in context, almost). "What," I asked of my movie-watching companion, "was she just driving in circles, waiting for them to be in danger?" My friend shrugged empathetically, confused as I was at what Marion was doing in the film if they weren't going to do anything with her. From that point on, her character basically stares at things with her mouth agape and doing nothing - and don't get me started on the characters portrayed by John Hurt and Ray Winstone.

The MacGuffin of the film is just that, a MacGuffin, but Hitchcock would balk at Spielberg and Lucas's continuous use of his term - for the ingenious devices he used to keep the story going - in the films' promotions and press conferences . The MacGuffin of a film, in this case the mysterious crystal skulls of a South American kingdom, is the object or event that sets things going so we can get to what really interests us: the relationships and action on screen. But that doesn't mean that the MacGuffin can be so simply addressed or haphazardly handled.

In Raiders, they're looking for the Ark of the Covenant, the holy casket that holds the Ten Commandments - that's a quality MacGuffin that leads to great drama, action and suspense. The numerous writers of Crystal Skull seem uninterested in their own MacGuffin, creating a mystery which is neither compelling nor particularly mysterious. The stakes of finding the objects don't seem high enough: maybe it's just me, but Soviets, especially post-Stalin Soviets, just aren't as scary as Nazis. And the objects themselves are way too silly looking and unimaginative. Oh my God, even though they're pure crystal, they're still highly magnetic? Do tell!

 Like Crystal Skull, this review is getting cartoonish and bloated. The final verdict on this film is that it's nice to see Ford with the fedora and whip again, but despite Indiana Jones's guest appearance, this is not an Indiana Jones film. It is a lazy film, made by an actor whose relevance was on the wane, a writer/producer who has run out of ideas, and a director whose days as an imaginative Hollywood maverick are long behind him, and the link between them is the quest for cash.

I wanted to like this film, and certainly there are moments when the feeling of the old films are recaptured well. But overall, Stephen Spielberg proves that he is still the director of A.I, no longer the one of E.T. - and George Lucas proves that he is the creator of Jar-Jar Binks, no longer that of Indiana Jones. Reviews of the film have been very forgiving (especially Ebert's crazy ass), but I think in time we'll see that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, like Star Wars Episode III, may remind us of how some of our favorite films felt, but is little but a hollow imitation stuffed with nostalgia and the greedy dreams of old men.