124 minutes

In theaters May 22, 2008

Rating: PG-13, Thriller

If you've been "jonesing" for Indiana, your long wait is over. An Indy this is, an indie it's not.

But a welcome addition it most certainly is. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the fourth in the blockbuster series of breathlessly paced action-adventure thrillers kicked off by Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981, and then followed by Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in 1984 and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade in 1989, arrives nearly two decades after the last installment.

Seems like yesterday.

No small-scale project, this. Instead, it's another high-profile collaboration among director Steven Spielberg, writer-producer George Lucas, and star Harrison Ford.

Indy IV is set in 1957, exactly 19 years (in art, as in life) after the last adventure. It's the height of the Cold War, Elvis is on the jukebox, Brando is on the big screen, and Soviet operatives are on the trail of a supernatural, perhaps extraterrestrial, artifact.

Globe-trotting swashbuckler Jones, world-weary but still an adventuring archeology professor at Marshall College, continues to sport a leather jacket and a fedora, and still relies on his never-leave-home-without-it bullwhip, which is almost everything it's cracked up to be.

But, under government suspicion, the prof loses his teaching position and heads for the Peruvian jungle with a young assistant, played by Shia LeBeouf. They're in search of the Crystal Skull of Akator, said to bestow the power of mind control. That's why Soviet agents covet it as well, led by a KGB parapsychologist, played with memorable menace by Cate Blanchett.

As in Raiders, the opening reel is so intriguing, arresting, and exciting, it gives the rest of the film a lot to live up to. Maybe too much, which is why the law of diminishing returns sets in a bit in the late going, perhaps after one too many bullets has missed our hero from close range or a few too many calamities have been averted with nary a scratch. We want the action improbable, sure, but not literally cartoonish. And this level of outlandishness eventually becomes exhausting.

Aah, who cares? None of the excesses do all that much damage to this unabashedly farfetched and skillfully crafted adventure lark.

Harrison Ford steps right back into his signature role as if he hadn't been away more than a week. And the screenplay -- credited to David Koepp from a story co-written by Lucas -- started out with a working title of Indiana Jones and the Ravages of Time. So it not only acknowledges Indiana's advanced age but embraces it, turning it into a running -- okay, walking -- gag that works quite nicely. And Karen Allen makes a welcome return as Marion Ravenwood, the female lead in Raiders 27 years ago.

Spielberg concentrates on choreographed stunts rather than special effects -- although the film has its share of CGI -- so that it often plays like an affectionate throwback to the pre-digital, we're really-doing-this age. And his bravura set pieces are, as usual, consummately constructed, as he tosses quicksand, waterfalls, and jungle creatures at us as if to celebrate the cliffhanger serials of his moviegoing youth. He also manages to tie in his abiding science fiction concerns, the ones that gave birth to such Spielberg flicks as E. T. and Close Encounters.

But, mostly, he just delivers on the requisite thrills and spills in a generous, pleasurable escapist entertainment that is deliciously preposterous.

For those keeping score, call Skulls not quite a Raiders, much better than Doom, and about the equivalent of Crusade.

In short: not too shabby.