When a beloved franchise is resurrected after a long lay-off, the end product usually gets stuck between a rock and a hard place. If it's too slick and modern, the purists cry foul. If it's too tightly tied to its antecedents, the modernists bitch and moan about it being dated and outmoded. Hell, George Lucas copped it from both sides with the Star Wars prequels. That hasn't stopped him, however, from reopening the vault containing his other beloved franchise, as Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull roars its way into cinemas nineteen years after the last installment Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade. And guess what? The news is all pretty much good.

The film opens breathlessly in the mid-fifties, with a now slightly (but not distractingly) aged Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford slips back into character with surprising and engaging ease) captured by a cadre of Russian soldiers. Led by scientist Irina Spalko (the perennially overrated Cate Blanchett, who hams it up deluxe, and appears to have modelled her character on Natasha from the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons), they're after an artifact that will give them untold power in their Cold War battles with the US. From there, the film rattles all around the world, as Indy teams with young wannabe tough guy Mutt Williams (current "it boy" Shia LaBeouf, who makes a pretty good fist of things here) to find the secrets to a mysterious crystal skull that may or may not be linked to an alien presence in ancient Maya. Throw in Ray Winstone as Indy's shady sidekick Mac; Jim Broadbent as his dithering college superior; John Hurt as a raving lunatic; and a very, very welcome return from Raiders Of The Lost Ark's Karen Allen, and you have - to put it simply - a rollicking good time.

While there are negatives (Blanchett, quite frankly, sucks; the aliens at the centre of the plot are alluded to just a little too literally; some of the CGI looks a little out of place; there are several strange, jokey references to gophers - did we miss something?), they're certainly just minor glitches in the larger scheme of things. The excitingly staged action/chase sequences (which take up much of the film) are dazzling in their execution; the story hangs together nicely; the references to 1950s Cold War paranoia are funny and well delivered, as is a sequence where Indy finds himself trapped on a nuclear test site; and the interplay between Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen was one of the best things about Raiders Of The Lost Ark, and while she doesn't have a hell of a lot to do here, it's just great to see her again) is utterly delightful at every turn. Fun, entertaining, genuinely amusing, and made with an abundance of what appears to be honest-to-god warmth; Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull is a worthy addition to one of the great movie franchises.