Thwack! Smash!

That's the sound of Indiana Jones engaging in fisticuffs with the villains in his first new adventure in nineteen years and while some blows hit their target there's no knock-out, killer WOW punch.

To be sure, there are scenes galore of derring-do and, let's be clear, no special effect is better than Harrison Ford (lookin' fit and able at the bus pass age of 65) as Indy, when he whips out his bull-whip.

Aged 66, Harrison Ford is back as the whip-cracking adventurer in Indiana Jones: The Curse of the Crystal Skulls

Aged 66, Harrison Ford is back as the whip-cracking adventurer in Indiana Jones: The Curse of the Crystal Skulls

But we don't see enough of that iconic glint in Indy's eye. Not enough jokes, and while the stunts are clever there's a sense that we've seen a lot of them before, probably in all the movies that copied the original Indiana Jones film, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

While there's fun to be had at this new film, there were moments when I thought, like some of Indy's archaeological finds, it probably should have remained as a museum piece.

And I say that as a huge fan of the the original Raiders film, and as someone who moved at break-neck speed down the Croisette in Cannes, where the film was having it's first public screening anywhere in the world yesterday afternoon and a gala premiere last night, to make certain I got a good seat in the 1500 seater Palais de Festival auditorium.

I ran up the steps humming the strains of John Williams famous Indiana Jones score and I cheered at the film's opening credits .

But whatever the critics, and this film writer, thinks, the picture will make many millions of dollars, but, I wonder, will it satisfy?

There's some amusing stuff early on in the film, set in the Cold war age of the late 1950s, when Indy, or Dr Henry Jones Jr, if you will, confronts soviet agent Colonel Doctor Irina Spalko at a US desert base in Nevada.

That famous fedora comes into view and Indy sneers, "Russians".

He takes one look at the Colonel Doctor, played with icy coolness by Cate Blanchett and declares: "You're not from around here are you?"

Harrison Ford and Shia LaBeouf search for the Crystal Skull

There's a good bit of banter between Indy, Spalko and Ray Winstone's conniving double agent in the first half an hour and then we meet the reigning young heart-throb (if we're to believe the results an an Orange Bafta most popular young movie star poll) Shia LaBeouf who arrives on a motorbike looking like the most obvious homage to Marlon Brando and James Dean. I guess the marketing chiefs at Paramount Pictures (it is they who make most artistic and commercial decisions) felt some youth appeal was needed to draw in younger movie-goers.

Raiders of the Lost Ark came out in 1981 and the last Indy movie, The Last Crusade hit screens 19 years ago, so there's a whole generation of kids who never saw the movies on the big screen and know about Indy through videos and DVDs.

Those kids go and see movies where action moves at warp speed. I can't deny there's a certain old-fashioned appeal in seeing a lean and mean action star burst back onto the screen as a much beloved movie character but you'd have thought that 19 years was enough time to come up with a top-of-the-line script that absolutely demanded our attention for two hours.

A couple of the set pieces are fabulous - a sword fight on speeding trucks between LaBeouf's Mutt and Blanchett's Spalko plus there's an edge of your seat moment involving killer red ants.

And snakes! There must be snakes because Indy hates snakes, right? Well, there's a snake. That's all I'm giving away on that one.

There are several jokes, not all of them funny, which point out that Indy's no longer a young man.

"For an old man, you ain't bad in a fight", Mutt tells Indy, adding, "what are you, about 80?"

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Cate Blanchett, who plays Russian spy Irina Spalko, in the latest Indiana Jones blockbuster

I remember being very excited by Karen Allen's no-nonsense heroine Marion Ravenwood in Raiders and she's back with a tale to tell about a secret she's been carrying these past twenty odd years and I suspect all of you movie geeks out there know what the secret is but I'm not going to spoil it for those who don't.

Allen still has a tremendous smile though.

Indeed, the casting gives this film real class, not just in Ford, Blanchett and Allen but Ray Winstone, John Hurt and Jim Broadbent.

And Ford told me something about how the film-makers tried to keep things to a human scale.

"We do it the old-fashioned way and allow ourselves to be real human beings as opposed to painted in special effects".

I understand that, but there's a sense now that if some blockbuster movies want to be old-fashioned ,then that's allowed.

But they have to be up to date as well, I'm afraid.

Oh, I must salute Britain's own Gary Powell, the film's stunt coordinator. He and his team are the real heroes of this movie.