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Well, I was worried about whether this movie would work. After all, Harrison Ford is the same generation as my parents!

Some of the reviews I read seemed to pan the movie. Others enjoyed it.

We took our children and one of their friends yesterday. It was a lovely evening!

They DID have a lot of action scenes, but they didn’t try to pretend he was a buff young man. Some of the stunts were designed to show how old he was.

Let’s talk dialog: I can’t pretend that dialog is EVER one of the strong suits of the screenwriters in this franchise. Still, it followed comfortable patterns and some of the one-liners were right on the mark! Will it be considered great literature in generations to come?

No, but let’s talk about the purposes of this movie: To showcase characters that people have come to love. To bring the storyline (such as it was) along into the future, keeping the characters in the same age-progression as the actors. There were two they brought back in particular: Ford and (one other I shan’t mention due to its spoiler status)… A couple of surprise twists to the plot, kept the primary purpose of this movie in the forefront: ACTION.

It wasn’t non-stop, but it was so engaging that for two hours we weren’t really in the theater, we were so engaged we didn’t notice time passing.

Which makes this film perfect for summer. And later with hot cider and popcorn, perfect for long winter afternoons when it’s too nasty to go outside.

When I woke up this morning (I slept in — luxury!), I noticed there were white spots all over the medlar. Sure enough, it’s in bloom all of a sudden!

And the snowball bush has REAL snowballs again (though still a bit green).

And the viburnum my neighbor planted in the gap in our hedgerow:

And the other white-blooming shrub today is the bridalveil spirea in the back. You can see it next to my Lucky boy for scale. This is the first year it has done so well.

The pretty orange cream-sicle poppy is also blooming now, but I didn’t get a good pic when the light was right. Will have to try again soon. It blooms from now until frost!