When I last left Indiana Jones, he was standing on the steps of some government building, fuming because the bureaucrats have stonewalled him on what they plan to do with the Lost Ark he had just snatched out of the hands of the Nazis. Indy was going for a drink with his on-again girlfriend, Marion Ravenwood.

Two other movies have come out since Raiders of the Lost Ark, but I don't remember much of them, even though I eagerly lapped them up when they were playing in cinemas. About all I remember of Temple of Doom is that scene where people are eating monkey brains. And then in Last Crusade, when someone says "Dr. Jones ..." and Sean Connery and Harrison Ford both turn their heads and answer "Yes?" at the same time.

Nineteen years from now, Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will likely be more or less as memorable as the last two installments were for me.

While Raiders of the Lost Ark was a true popcorn classic -- for the opening scene alone -- there are none of those moments in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

The new movie finds Indy about 20 years since Raiders. He's pulled out of the trunk of a car by some Russians posing as American soldiers, who have sneaked into the top secret Area 51 military base in the New Mexico desert.

They go into the warehouse, surely the same one where the Lost Ark has been stored, to find a magnetic box that Indy somehow had a hand in recovering 10 years before in 1947.

My suspension of disbelief starts to falter as gunpowder is whisked through the air by an unseen force, yet other hunks of metal like trucks, machine guns and swords are kept more or less manageable.

Actually, my suspension of disbelief had pretty well failed when Cate Blanchett showed up with a ridiculous black kewpie-doll haircut that might make her a grandmother of Javier Bardem's character in No Country for Old Men. Even more ridiculous is her Russian/Ukrainian accent, but I'm willing to forgive that when Indy actually makes a joke about it.

Indy makes his daring escape, surviving a hail of bullets, numerous right crosses, a rocket-sled ride and a nuclear bomb blast.

More ridiculousness ensues as he somehow teams up with a vain, motorcycle-riding dweeb named Mutt and heads to South America for a search for the mysterious Crystal Skull that gives Indy a close encounter of the third kind.

The CGI piles on to unbearable levels. It starts small with cute prairie dogs (and a clever dissolve from the Paramount logo), but gets more intrusive with the presence of marauding monkeys (and Shia LaBeouf as Tarzan, if you can believe it), a snake in place of a rope (ha ha, Indy hates snakes!), giant, man-eating ants and a car chase down a never-ending road through the jungle. Ultimately, it degenerates into an unbelievable, physically impossible maelstrom of murk.

In Raiders of the Lost Ark, you could tell the melting faces of the Nazis were plastic, but they still looked cool. In Crystal Skull, it has no impact nor magic because you know it's CGI.

Harrison Ford is a good sport all the way through, smirking as he parodies his role and cashes a big fat check. Karen Allen appears amazed to be working. Ray Winstone is given the same thankless role as Alfred Molina in Raiders, except Winstone lasts a lot longer. Jim Broadbent is serviceable as always.

I did appreciate the shout-outs to the earlier films in the series -- the longing look at Denholm Elliot's and Sean Connery's photos were particularly poignant, even if Connery isn't dead yet. And there's a glimpse of a golden object in a crate in the opening sequence. Producer-writer even gets a nod to his American Graffiti, with a hot-rod sequence at the very start. The '50s nostalgia makes the movie fun.

At the same time, it's all stuff I don't think anyone but die-hard Indy fans will get. Generations have passed since the last film. Crystal Skull isn't a good introduction. Yet I fear the decent box-office performance of this latest film in the Indy franchise means there will be more. On the upside, the sequels could be better, but I doubt it.