JazzmeltsintoWar is nuts.

Rating: Null/10 (17 March 2001)

You need to read the review above from JazzmeltsintoWar before you can appreciate my review. Another review above compared "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" to Star Wars and I thought that review did a good job of explaining the idiocy of people who say this movie had no plot, no story, no good acting, stupid action scenes, etc. After reading the review above from JazzmeltsintoWar, I decided to write "my" review of all the Star Wars movies - JazzmeltsintoWar style. I do, however, really like Star Wars, but it shows you how crazy it is that people say "I don't get it" when talking about "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." By the way, if you can understand anything JudBoy says in his entire review, congrats on your psychological dissection of the protagonistic views of confrontational movie managment skills....see I can use big and meaningless sentences too. I still have no idea what JazzmeltsintoWar was even talking about, but it sure made me.
My review of all four Star Wars movies.
There are those who loved this movie, citing it as cool and exciting, and then are those such as myself who think of it as over-rated.
Those who don't like this movie typically reference the fact that these characters warrant no occasion for our caring for them. They are "not developed well." We know little about them, etc etc.
The reality of the movie is, something some viewers have grasped in which case they don't like it, is that the characters and the relationships between them are unengrossing and unidimensional involved in an unidimensional and simple-structured plot that unfolds in the crudest way (i.e., characters, whom we know little about, give us little reason to care for them- at least in my view- who share or reveal few experiences with us apart from fighting, saving a captured princess, fighting off robotic villains, all the while revealing their relationships between them in a peripheral plot structered in an A (introduction/conflict) B (digression/romance) A (resolution to conflict) format)
There is a bivalent dynamic between director/story/movie and the viewer. We speak of things like suspense of disbelief. "The Force", for instance, was not a bother to me at all- the movie is a fantasy, though I think the idea of "The Force" could have been romanticized, fictionalized a bit, to give it a more apealing aura. As it is it was merely placed in the scenes.
The light saber duels are the most upsetting thing to me. What constitutes our captivation with any light saber duel is that there is a *credible* or somehow real sense of danger. The fighting that takes place between Luke Skywalker and Darth "Skywalker" Vader, in particular, is nothing hot or heart-rending. Instead what we have is purposeless, meaningless duel between father and son, who fight for extended periods of time, and always at the end of the movie. One scene has them in a cloud city and they fight first using "the force" to just jump and leap, and then use "the force" to fling heavy object at each other, as though that's supposed to induce adrenaline in us. It doesn't. What we're left with is a film that reduces to displaying "how the force looks when used by a master and novice." Any edge of the seat, heart pumping adrenaline here? Not at all. Personally I get more involved in a regular season highschool chess game.
All the while George Lucas does NOTHING to compensate for the fact that these men flailing wild lightsabers that cut thru anything are supposed to be *believably* formidable somehow as Jedi masters, that their mental attacks using the force actaully do damage etc. What is left is the glaring sensibilty that a viewer simply can't ignore, and if he does grant that "suspence of disbelief" it is an act of kindness on the behalf of the viewer. No movie that is supposed to be great an oscar-worthy should require that kind of viewer grace. A huge dissapointment, that could have easily been mended with just a few insertions by the director. Granted, there was one interesting fight scene that takes place by the only interesting characters in the movie, the virile, heroic Obi Won Kenobi and a spiteful, vengeful Darth Maul. Theirs is the only fight scene that carry a sense of adversity and overcoming in it.
George Lucas' touch was welcome, offering us beautiful cinematography, but as noted, by another viewer, is bordering on the amateurish. The idea of being in space could have been in a stale "noweather" sound stage, and the beauty is nullified by this fact. Space is beautiful, not images of it.
The relationships and romances, being quite frank, were not engrossing for me at all. Trite sentiments, and banal dialogue.
This movie could have been a great and and overwhelmingly beautful movie. As it is "I don't get it." I see a lot of raw potential unfufilled in movie that somehow does not "work", does not produce something memorable, wondrous, and a beauty we can be grateful for. Those who don't like this movie, are the ones "who get it" We are the ones not seduced by the hype, sensibilities unsedated and clarified. Six and a half stars only.