The Summer Exhibition is struggling to adapt to the times. It is a bit like watching some be-suited man at the seaside struggling behind his beach towel to slip into something a little snazzier. He doesn’t want to lose balance, he doesn’t want to let anything slip, but he’s definitely hoping to end up a bit cooler.

It all sounds slightly awkward, and that’s undoubtedly because it is. This time-honoured annual event is pretty intractable. How do you combine the world’s biggest open art competition with a celebration of the often rather unfashionable talents of academicians, and still play to the strengths of the contemporary art scene?

This year’s chosen theme doesn’t help to narrow the options. Artists have been encouraged to explore From Life which, let’s face it, can (and must) encompass pretty much anything from Damien Hirst’s gargantuan take on Degas’s Little Dancer, which towers pregnant and semi-dissected above the facades of Burlington House (and makes Sir Joshua Reynolds look like some garlanded limpet), to almost 300 small works which coat the Small Weston Gallery like some mix’n’match collage of wallpaper swatches.

The trouble with the Summer Exhibition is, inevitably, that it is far too big. There are far too many pieces by artists who have worked to the same tired old formula for year after year.

Time and again one wonders why something has been selected, only to consult the catalogue and find the obvious explanation: the letters RA. But then when, in my case, I looked for one RA in particular, Craigie Aitchison, it was only to discover that he had submitted nothing but a representative print.

However, the co-ordinators this year have worked hard to help the spectator to find a focus. Two galleries are dedicated to the works of recently deceased academicians. Together they celebrate the strengths of British Pop.

Sculptural pieces by Sir Eduardo Paolozzi stand sentinel over the octagonal central hall (though the surrounding frieze of screenprints has been hung too high up to see). A room of Patrick Caulfield canvases is remarkable. His swansong work Bishops, alone, would make this show worth a visit.

Invited artists - such as Anselm Kieffer and Chantal Joffe – have made striking contributions. Pick and choose and you will discover eloquent works in every gallery from a shimmering Anish Kapoor mirror that makes the eyes swim through some dynamic three-dimensional architectural drawings to Richard Long’s subtle "find" of painted driftwood.

Open submissions are given a fair chance by being scattered among them. But when it comes to the work of the Brit artists, of which there are several, many of the pieces feel too much like token contributions.

Perhaps it is Martin Creed who best captures the mood. His on-and-off light switch has been installed under a modest little shade, at the close of the show. The cool conceptual meets staid tradition. And the Academy laughs at the irony of what it has tried to achieve.

Royal Academy (020-7300 8000) Jun 12-Aug 20