How long does it take to get back in the Indy groove, after a 19-year layoff?
Maybe five seconds.
That's the amount of time it takes for Harrison Ford to bend over, pick up his fedora and place it on his head.
In this early moment from "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," Ford and his boyish collaborators, director Steven Spielberg and executive producer George Lucas, reclaim their famed character for a fourth installment of a billion-dollar franchise.
How does the movie live up to its predecessors? It's not as wild and crazy as the first two pictures, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" and "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," but it has a good deal more oomph than 1989's "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade."
From the opening act, you can tell that everyone is on his game. It's surprising how much emotional attachment there is to this durable character; you might expect a bit of rust on Indiana Jones, but Ford is so completely in the zone, the revival of Indy is seamless.
Dr. Jones is in Nevada, in 1957, where Soviet agents have broken into a top-sec ret warehouse to try to steal a mysterious object. The mayhem escalates to a literal explosion, which the movie has a hard time topping for sheer excitement.
It never does quite top it, but screenwriter David Koepp craftily steers us into Cold War intrigue and then into the jungles of Peru, where the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull awaits.
I will not bother recounting the plot, although it does make sense in a completely daffy way. (This is an Indiana Jones movie, not Shakespeare.) It is much more important to note that the movie offers waterfalls, grave-robbing, coded maps, quicksand, hidden caves and thousands of man-eating ants.
Also one very large snake, although I wouldn't dream of being specific.
For this adventure, Indy is joined by a whippersnapper (Shia LaBeouf, from "Transformers"), an addled old colleague (John Hurt), and a comrade in arms (Ray Winstone) from WWII days. The movie also returns Marion (Karen Allen), Indy's feisty love match from "Raiders."
Best of all, there's a sword-wielding Russian baddie in a jet-black bob, played by Cate Blanchett. She must've been studying the old "Rocky and Bullwinkle" shows with Boris Badanov and Natasha, because this is a cartoon Soviet villain of a vintage kind. Even Blanchett's body language is brilliant -- stylized and precise.
It's a fun movie. I could point out that the reliance on computer-generated effects is a bummer at times, or that the climax will likely induce a certain amount of eye-rolling.
The amazing thing to me is that even when Spielberg is working with material that is pulp nonsense, he brings all of his filmmaking skills to the game.
His eye for camera movement and shadow, his ability to arrange people within the frame to create a dynamic (even when it's just two people sitting and talking), is sharper than ever.
The only thing that flags is the humor, which is sometimes at a sitcom level. But listen, these things were supposed to be like Saturday-afternoon serials, a now-long-forgotten form. Don't demand the moon, and Indy will satisfy.
