For the first hour, the movie put me in my happy place as Ford, older but still rugged, survived repeated brushes with death. But as director Steven Spielberg's action scenes started piling up like cars in rush-hour traffic, I started thinking to myself, "This is a lot of work for not that much fun."

The new movie takes place in 1957, a different era than the rough-and-tumble pre-World War II times of the first three films - a fact made creepily manifest when Indy is silhouetted against a mushroom cloud in the Nevada desert. How he gets there involves a Garbo-esque KGB agent, Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), and a forced visit to Area 51 to find some mysterious remains. (The warehouse will produce smiles of recognition - it's the one from the final scene of "Raiders of the Lost Ark.")

Soon, Indy is paired with Mutt (Shia LaBeouf), a greaser on a motorcycle who is seeking Prof. Oxley (John Hurt), Mutt's mentor and Indy's Oxford roommate, in the jungles of Peru. (Yes, Indy and Mutt fly Pan Am, their route traced by the familiar red line on the map - yet another touchstone of the series.) Spalko and her Russian soldiers have captured Oxley, along with Mutt's mother - Indy's ex-girlfriend Marion Ravenwood, played by Karen Allen, as feisty as when we first met her in "Raiders."

Allen's arrival is such an emotional boost that only then did I realize how pokey the movie was before her entrance. Spielberg seems to realize it too, as he amps up the action with a succession of mad chases and over-the-top special effects. Alas, the chases and stunts have a "been there, done that" feel; for example, a rousing chase through the Amazon jungle, though breathtaking in its complexity, feels like a re-do of the classic truck chase from "Raiders."

For a franchise built on the authenticity of its stunts and effects, "Crystal Skull" is betrayed by Spielberg's over-reliance on computer-generated trickery. Some scenes that should soar, like Mutt's Tarzan-like swinging on vines or a triple fall down a waterfall, are weighted down because we can sense they were created by pixels.

But most of the problems in "Crystal Skull" are in the too-many-cooks script, credited to David Koepp ("Jurassic Park") but also handled by producer George Lucas, writer Jeff Nathanson ("The Terminal," "Rush Hour 3") and countless others. The characters aren't developed sufficiently; in spite of Blanchett's game performance, her two-dimensional Russian temptress should go off and make beeg trouble for Moose and Squirrel. Also, there's not enough of the offhand humor that made the franchise so rollicking, and the one truly hilarious moment - LaBeouf's entrance, dressed like Brando in "The Wild One" - was probably not funny on purpose.

It's hard to discuss the most nagging problem of "Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull" without revealing the ending, except to say this: In the previous movies, the mystery of the movie's central artifact was not just supernatural but spiritual: the Old Testament wrath of the Ark of the Covenant in "Raiders," the stones unleashing the power of Kali in "Temple of Doom," and the Holy Grail in "Last Crusade." This time, as Spielberg dips into other parts of his canon, the supernatural answer falls maddeningly short of the divine.

SEAN P. MEANS can be reached at movies@sltrib.com or 801-257-8602. Send comments about this review to livingeditor@sltrib.com.