Harrison Ford received a five-minute standing ovation at this year’s Cannes Film Festival directly before the screening of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.” From all reports, it proved more voluble than the round of applause after the final credits had finished rolling. The audience extended its politesse more than its enthusiasm, it seems, in honoring Mr. Ford’s latest, and last, go-round as the world’s most famous archeologist.

Mr. Ford has had a remarkable career, and it reached another high with his recent supporting turn in “Shrinking,” the Apple Original series centering on Jason Segel as a therapist overcoming his wife’s untimely death. The show was, for the majority of its run, wonderfully caustic and often laugh-out-loud funny. A key component of its success was Mr. Ford as Dr. Paul Rhoades, a therapist suffering not only from Parkinson’s disease but a distinct lack of filters. Mr. Ford makes a great curmudgeon.

This should be apparent as well in “The Dial of Destiny,” albeit only after a lengthy opening set piece that takes place toward the end of World War II. A young Indiana Jones — the 80-year-old Mr. Ford eerily transmogrified through CGI — is busy thwarting Nazis in their attempt to abscond with the Lance of Longinus, the spear that purportedly pierced Christ’s torso during the crucifixion. Indy and his compatriot Basil Shaw, a kerfuffling Englishman played to the hilt by Toby Jones, spot the Lance as a fake, but they do come across the Antikythera, a clock-like artifact that was invented by Archimedes, the Greek mathematician and astronomer.

So far, so good — or, rather, bad. There are still an abundance of Nazis to deal with, particularly Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), a physicist eager to get a hold of the Antikythera because of its purported ability to enable time travel. Remember: The movie, proper, hasn’t really started yet. But we do thrill to Indy and Basil engaging in derring-do, not least battling the enemy on top of a speeding train. In the midst of all this hurly-burly, the whereabouts of the Antikythera becomes a bit muddled. Where did that damned thing go?

Fast-forward to New York City some 20 years later. Professor Henry Walton Jones Jr., on the eve of his retirement from Hunter College, is a grizzled old man living in an unkempt apartment. We see him asleep in an overstuffed lazy chair wearing nothing but a pair of boxers. “Magical Mystery Tour” by the Beatles blares from a nearby window. The neighbors are a shambling array of hippies, yippies, and other hangers-on from the Summer of Love. Cinematographer Phedon Papamichael bathes the proceedings in a golden haze that’s commensurate with a setting that is less 1960s Manhattan than 1950s Hollywood.

The mismatched mise en scène will strike a jarring chord for New Yorkers of a certain age. Perhaps New York circa 1969 proved too gritty for director James Mangold and executive producers Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, the original braintrust of the franchise. Then again, how much verisimilitude can be expected of a film in which we watch Indiana Jones ride a horse down the stairs of the 59th Street IRT, engage with a barreling subway train, and come out on the platform of the 50th Street station, unscathed and with horse intact? 

There’s more to “The Dial of Destiny,” maybe too much: buried treasure, car chases, a bevy of eels, and an improbable trip to it’s-not-where-you-think-it-is Syracuse. The reliably saucy Phoebe Waller-Bridge is on hand as Indy’s goddaughter, Antonio Banderas appears as a salty dog, and, in a role likely meant to appeal to young’uns not interested in an old man’s adventures, Ethann Isidore is a lovable Tangieri pick-pocket. 

As for Mr. Mangold: He clearly took to heart Mr. Speilberg’s advice to treat the movie like a two-and-half-hour trailer. The result may not always be coherent, but it is studious in its avoidance of lulls. As a bonus, the denouement will make fans of the original “Raiders of the Lost Ark” feel warm and fuzzy inside. Surely, that counts for something.