Directed by Joe Johnston, this picture rips along with cascading energy and ends up being more entertaining than the last "Indiana Jones" film.

Everything in it works the way that gripping yarns once used to do.

What the film needs is wit and that is what, and barely in time, Timothy Dalton supplies... He makes the rest of "Rocketeer's" perfect squareness palatable, and make it possible for us to relate to its gee-whiz allure.

"The Rocketeer" is a theme park of a flick -- caricatures instead of characters; melodrama instead of realism and effects that aren't so much special as otherworldly.