Another Crystal Skull but more melancholy The cons:
The opening set piece did a good job of recapturing the aesthetic of the original series. CGI Indy was visually impressive, but for the odd uncanny valley glimpse here and there. More notably though, it didn't feature the visual and scripted gags that were a hallmark of Spielberg's first trilogy. It's almost business-like in the way that it sets up the rest of the movie.
Like Crystal Skull, this adventure is rooted more in science fiction than classic archeology. The time travel gimmick just did not work for me. Time travel movies always create paradoxes that can't be resolved... or they create more questions than they answer. This one is no different. Does the dial create the rifts or just find them? Indy informs Voller that Archimedes' didn't know about continental drift, therefore the rift they are headed for will not take them to 1939. But, in a too-wild-to-believe coincidence, the continental drift error takes them to Archimedes himself. What is the probability of that, especially considering that neither Voller or Indy take into consideration the vast movements of the earth around the sun and the movement of the entire solar system through the galaxy? Archimedes himself would not have known about these celestial movements at all so the calibration of his Dial should have been even more wildly inaccurate.
There is a huge cloud of melancholy that hangs over Indy in his senior years. Loved ones have died, or moved away. He's living in a squalid apartment, falling asleep in front of his TV night after night. His accomplishments in past adventures -- including as a spy(!) as we learned in Kingdom -- have not earned him any sort of recognition or interest from either the public or the government.
The action sequences are missing the tension was drawn out in the early movies in similar scenes? Remember the very first movie? In the first ten minutes, we saw Indy barely outrun a boulder, pull at his whip frantically to get himself out of the hole and under the closing stone gate, race across fields with arrows and blow guns at his back... Who can forget that fight between Indy and the huge German as an out of control airplane slowly circles around them? The chase scenes and such in this movie are competent, but never generate that level of "OMIGOD!-will-he- make-it-in-time?" that we saw in the original movies.
The pros:
The death of Mutt Jones. I expected that there would be a throwaway line about how Indy and Marion's son was off living his own life and adventures as a way to explain his absence. Instead, the character is effectively used to provide context to Indy's weary attitude, and to explain the absence of Marion.
The return of Marion. We all wanted Indy to finish up on a positive note. After a movie and a sequence where we get sad and depressed Indy, the movie comes full circle (again) for both of these characters.
Helena. I actually liked the prickly relationship between Indy and Helena. I thought it was justified very well, and it evolved organically into the mutual admiration and affection that we eventually see. That said, I don't see a need to continue the series... or a spin-off series... with this character. The Indy series ends in the 60s, well past the time of the earlier trilogy, which were a tribute to pulp novels and cliffhanger serial movies. The producers will never be able to recapture the spirit of those earlier movies.