Top men working on it... Top, men.

Oye. It had its moments, it was fun, but this movie was all over the place. Now, we're not talking Star Wars prequels here, but Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull suffers from undeveloped peripheral characters, over-complication, and a story that stretches the bounds of the genre mighty thin. eg,

Pointless character: "why do you have to return it [the skull] alone?"
Indiana: "Because it told me to." ........ yikes.

That 'pointless character' is some double-triple crossing agent working for whomever the plot finds necessary at a given moment. His character is painfully bland with a distinct lack of back story to the point where I wanted to shout at the screen, "Who ARE you?"

Indiana Jones always had a companion in the original trilogy, but he also got his fair share of solo screen time to do what he does. This time around he's surrounded by others, including a Marion Ravenwood who hasn't aged particularly gracefully.

The original movies were about the characters more so than the story lines engineered to get us from one cool action sequence to the next. And I would probably be okay with the level of story in this film had the new characters been captivating. By the time Shia LaBouef (whatever his name is) came on screen he was a welcome addition, he and Cate Blanchett offered some much needed believability.

As for the script, well, lets just leave it at this, I don't want to see Indiana Jones dealing with aliens. I just don't. Sorry.

On the plus side, the action scenes were generally very good. Good enough to generally forget about the story and ignore the side characters you wished weren't there. Karen Allen as Ravenwood is generally ok in these sequences as well (though nothing can replace the coolness of her 25-years-younger shot-downing incarnation).

One wonders why Spielburg and Lucas lost their ability to create compelling storylines with interesting characters, perhaps age has clouded their ability to make good guy / bad guy judgements.

But all that said, if you go see a matinee, and have your expectations in check, you should have a good time.