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Who’d have thought when we were all loving the first series of Fleabag back in 2016, that Phoebe Waller-Bridge would one day be the co-lead in a big Hollywood blockbuster. I mean we all knew she had a great future ahead of her as she lay there monologuing about the size of her butt hole, but I’m not sure at that stage we’d have imagined her taking part in car chases and shoot outs alongside one of action cinema’s most iconic characters, but here we are and I have to say it’s great.

Waller-Bridge hasn’t actually done that much as an actor at all since Fleabag, focusing instead on writing. She did play a droid in a Star Wars film, which was clearly a major movie too, but that was the comedy sidekick part not the leading lady; she didn’t even get to show her face.

Faces are of course important in the casting of women in big American movies, men too but not to quite the same extent. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is clearly attractive but not in a way where it isn’t her intelligence and skills that have got Hollywood’s attention first, and that feels like it should be noted. It isn’t her looks that initially got her noticed and as brilliant as Margot Robbie and Jennifer Lawrence are I’m not sure they can assert the same. She also isn’t quite the same age as the majority of women in these circumstances either. For comparison she is the best part of a decade older than Karen Allen, Kate Capshaw and Alison Doody when they first appeared in this series. She’s not playing the love interest of course, she is Indiana Jones’ God daughter, but this only gave them more licence to go younger with the casting and they didn’t. All in all, it is great to see this actor, with all of her quirky Britishness, in this part and she absolutely smashes it. She is a brilliant foil for the older Indy and brings charm and humour to the film, arguably more than he does.

Her Helena also has a more rounded persona than the women that came before her, even Allen’s Marion Crane. I don’t know if this has something to do with her, she has done script doctoring before, or whether the writers just knew that you don’t offer an underwritten female role to Phoebe Waller-Bridge but the character is quite layered with some interesting motivations and an engaging level of unpredictability. She is also highly able and totally drives the plot and adventure. There is one point where she gets freaked out by some bugs and I momentarily feared they had fallen back on female stereotypes but Indy then reacts in the same way so it’s okay. Interestingly this is very different to how we saw him deal with the same thing in 1984’s The Temple of Doom so I wonder if Waller-Bridge said she’d only scream if he did too. There might be some elements of Fleabag in Helena, she even has an evident sex drive and clear female thirst, and the film certainly isn’t pushing her acting abilities as much as it might, but holding the screen in this type of film is a skill in itself and she has easily the charisma to carry it.

Still though she’s demonstrably not the headliner. This is the third time Harrison Ford has returned for one final appearance as Indiana Jones and his age was a factor even in the last one. He was referred to as Gramps back in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull with someone quipping about how he was not bad in a fight for an old man and asked ‘what was he, eighty?’ and that was fifteen years ago. Now he is eighty and this aspect plays more into the story this time. It kind of has to because Ford is definitely moving slower than he used to but credit to them for not removing that truth with cinematic trickery. The last 2003 movie is not widely loved but thankfully this one is a substantial improvement. Most people talk about the stupid scenes with the mushroom bomb and the monkeys when decrying Crystal Skull but more than that it was the movie’s general lack of drive and energy that let it down. It felt like an Indy film on autopilot and it is absolutely the weakest thing Spielberg has done. This film has a slower pace but here it feels deliberate and totally in keeping with the hero’s advancing years. It’s not Spielberg directing this time though, it’s James Mangold and he did a similar thing successfully with an older Wolverine and Professor X in Logan six years ago (when Hugh Jackman was not yet fifty). It isn’t explicit in the script but there is a definite sense of how, after a life chasing ancient artefacts, Indiana Jones is now the relic and it gives the series a new approach in how it looks back at the past. This film more than its predecessors considers the history behind the items they are seeking, rather than just their power and it is definitely suggesting that perhaps he himself belongs more in the past than he does the present.

This being said there are still plenty of exciting action sequences, involving Ford as well as Waller-Bridge, and the whole thing feels delightfully like those first three Indiana films, from the 80s. I would describe it as old school rather than nostalgic and it is a lot of fun. Is it a story that should definitely have been told? Probably not. Is it a good night out at the movies though? Absolutely.

This doesn’t appear to be the opinion of everyone though, some critics and friends have not liked it at all. If I’m honest, I can’t see the problem. I’ve heard complaints about the use of CGI over practical effects, particularly in relation to what the series has done before, but people do realise that Harrison Ford, Capshaw and Ke Huy Quan weren’t really thundering around in those mine carts don’t they? Funnily enough Sean Connery also didn’t get caught in a dogfight Southwest of Berlin. There are plenty of convincing stunts here and nothing that looks animated like it clearly does in the latest Fast & Furious movie.

There has also been criticism of the ending and I’ll admit this might take some swallowing but it doesn’t nuke the fridge. It is actually quite reserved (narratively if not conceptually) and focuses on character beats rather than bombastic explosions and face melting. There are a few things flying around but they are not ghosts or space ships and the weaponry involved is most definitely retro. None of it is any more than of a leap that the fantasy elements these films have always relied on and thematically it makes perfect sense. You don’t quite know where it is going and my favourite of all Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s moments comes right at the close of this too. John Williams, having retired from scoring Star Wars films but returning for this, said that he had to write a new piece for the final scenes so the coda has evidently changed at some point in the process but I like how it all wraps up and this definitely feels like more of a finale than all the previous ones. At least until Indiana Jones and the Dungeon of the Infinite Cash Cow which I expect to come along some time in the next few years. Let’s see if Harrison Ford can escape from that. Still if Waller-Bridge comes back so will I.

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The Ripley Factor:

Aside from Helena who is a model of feminist representation, and a far better potential replacement for the lead than Shia LaBeouf ever was, there is a female CIA agent but she never quite reaches the promise the character presents. Other than that there aren’t really any significant female characters. Still, no women are objectified, tokenised or minimised so it wins out over last years big legacy sequel Top Gun Maverick in that respect.