4/10 stars. Annoying Woke nonsense factor: 3/10

I went to the last (maybe) Indiana Jones movie with great anticipation. I have loved this franchise since the very first (and best) one back in 1980. And with the exception of the awful Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, I have enjoyed watching the series. Even the Temple of Doom, marred only by the performance Spielberg’s wife, Kate Capshaw, is a very good movie.

Unfortunately, The Dial of Destiny was a major disappointment. When you are watching an action movie, with a great movie star like Harrison Ford in it, and you find yourself glancing at your watch, you know there is something amiss.

After the eventful first scene, the movie picks up Jones just before his retirement party at Hunter College in NYC. He lives like a hermit in a desolate and drab apartment. The time is now in the 1969, we have just landed on the moon. He looks old, haggard, miserable. Displaying every day of his age of 80. A downer for sure. We see him sitting down to drown his sorrows in a dive local bar. Belloq is not there.

Unbeknownst to Indi, he is in possession of a really important relic, and the daughter of his ex partner shows up at this precise moment to steal if from him. For reasons not well explained, the surviving nazi from the first scene shows up with a passel of goons and 20 year old CIA agent. At the very moment Indi is retrieving the magical relic. This magical and ludicrous plot hole is repeated numerous times.

First the positives, and there are enough here to make sure you watch it when it starts streaming. THe first scene is great, excellent action scenes. We see a CGI generated Indi, back traversing train tops and tangling with malevolent nazis. You can’t tell its not live or Ford himself. Really enjoyed the scene. However manufactured, he is always fun to watch in almost any role.

There are several other really fun, cool, exciting action scenes. Indi back riding a horse, this time being chased rather than chasing. A motorized rickshaw chase in downtown Tangier is very well done.

Mads Mikkelson, as always, has a good performance as the Bad Guy.

The producers decided to get the gang back together from the first movie, inserting regrettably short cameos from Karen Allen and Jonathan Rhys-Davies. If only they could have been in the movie as main characters again!

Here I get to one of the main downfalls of the movie, (besides being 2 1/2 hours long…yawn). Her name is Phoebe Waller-Bridge. She is the annoying star of Fleabag. Not particularly attractive, nor funny. Her character is supposed to be both funny and complex, but she exudes no charisma. She’s a scene killer, with an inexplicably awful haircut.

Instead of the great character Short Round, from Temple of Doom, we have an adolescent named Teddy, (Ethann Isidor.) He is not really given much to do and is not particularly interesting. He tags along with Waller-Bridge for reasons not explained until the final act.

The CIA is involved with the Bad Guys, then all of a sudden the Agency presence just disappears. Poof! No explanation.

If you have seen all of the Indiana Jones movies, you will recognize that many of the plot lines are just ripoffs of the earlier ones. Or maybe they are all homages. Whatever. The movie could have done with more originality, less homaging. .

Last criticism, the bad guys seem to have some kind of GPS tracker on Indi. As soon as Jones and Ms. Waller-snooze escape from their evil clutches, the bad guys show up almost exactly where they went in critical moments. Now, I can suspend belief with the best of movie lovers. A good movie would have explained how this was possible, before GPS was invented. The producers did not bother even trying to cover the absurdity of these enormous plot holes, which they left lying around like so many abandoned popcorn tubs at the theater.

I have been told that I am overly critical of the movies I review. Possibly. But I note that the movie has greatly underperformed its expectations, having been overtaken in ticket sales by an indy movie about child trafficking. Disney is hemhorrageing money on Dial. I think the movie audience has spoken, and I am right on this one.