People are nuts. The negative reactions to this film -- He's too old. She's too female. It's too woke. -- are all just excuses by the internet "fandom" to hate on something for the sake of taking a contrary view.

But let's be honest: Indiana Jones & the Dial of Destiny is a fun, nostalgic exit for a beloved hero who, for more than 40 years, has dazzled our imaginations with his amazing adventures. Is it the best in the series? No, obviously not. But it's fun. And Harrison Ford, as Indiana Jones, is always worth your time and attention for a couple of hours.

So, unless your inner child is completely dead inside, go see this movie and ride along with Indy one last time.

That's not to say there aren't issues. Foremost among them is, unfortunately, Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Indy's goddaughter Helena "Wombat" Shaw. It's not that I mind having a woman in the driver's seat, nor did I ever feel like she supplanted Indy as the primary character. It's just ... I didn't really like her.

She's got sharp edges and very little compassion or empathy. While it might be argued that her character is more closely akin to Indy's in The Temple of Doom, when his overriding motivation was "fortune and glory," she never won the audience's heart like he did -- perhaps, to be fair, because she didn't have Raiders of the Lost Ark a few years earlier to earn her that extra bit of good will.

That doesn't mean, with time and the right scripts, she couldn't carry her own movie. But as the new Indiana Jones? No.

The movie begins with a flashback set during World War II -- so, not too long after the events of Indiana Jones & the Last Crusade. Indiana Jones, along with fellow archeologist Basil Shaw (Toby Jones), has infiltrated a Nazi train to steal back the fabled Spear of Longinus, the latest mystical artifact to come in Hitler's sights. The spear proves to be a fake, but along the way Jones stumbles on a piece of the Antikythera Mechanism, the titular Dial of Destiny made by Archimedes, which purports to have a mathematical solution to time travel. He pockets it, of course, and after some classic Indy action, he and Baz escape.

It must be noted that the de-aging work in these scenes, using body doubles and facial images from hours of unused Indiana Jones and Star Wars footage, is pretty darn convincing. It isn't perfect, and at times Indy looks a bit too much like a video game character, but for the most part it works.

Then there's a bit of a rough transition to the 1960s, where we meet a tired old man whose days of fortune and glory are long behind him. It's a time of Beatles music and moon launches, and Dr. Henry Jones is a worn-out professor of archeology -- now teaching at a much less prestigious university -- and he's on the brink of retirement. Then, his long-lost goddaughter pops back into his life, followed quickly by Nazis. Yes, Nazis.

OK, the Cold War Russians from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull made for pretty good villains, but nothing beats Nazis as Indy's ultimate foe.

Foremost among them is Mads Mikkelsen as Dr. Jurgen Voller. In the opening flashback, he's a physicist caught up in Hitler's quest for arcane objects; it's he who finds the Antikythera Mechanism and first recognizes its potential. But after losing it to Indy (in a train fight that should have left him permanently disfigured, if not dead), Voller ends up after the war working on the U.S. moon launch -- and yes, that's a historical fact, the United States snapped up Nazi scientists like ripe cherries. He might have been content to rest on his laurels, accepting accolades from a grateful (if secretly despised) nation if Helena Shaw hadn't popped up on Indy's doorstep seeking the long-lost artifact.

Fights and chases ensue, and for the most part, it's a pretty great spectacle in true Indiana Jones fashion. Sure, he's not the fit young man he once was, but he wears his fedora and wields his whip with all of his former gusto.

Along the way he finds help from the likes of deepwater diver Renaldo (Antonio Banderas) and even old Sallah (John Rhys-Davies), who is now living in the States. Teddy (Ethann Isidore) is also along for the ride as, basically, Helena's Short Round.

There's another familiar face who appears at the very end, but I won't mention the name just in case you've avoided spoilers to this point. Suffice it to say, it's a nice moment, and it concludes the Indiana Jones story quite nicely.

Nothing will match the excitement of seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time. And making a better Indiana Jones movie than either Raiders or Last Crusade was always unlikely. But Dial of Destiny gives longtime fans one last adventure with one of the greatest movie heroes of our time, and I am so glad I didn't miss it on the big screen.

If you've hesitated to see it because of things you've read on the internet ... treat yourself. It's well worth your time.