"This season I will be wearing mostly hessian"

Rating: Null/10 (7 September 1999)

I was really looking forward to the Phantom Menace as I loved the original trilogy. This was due in no small part (pardon the pun) to Han Solo and the delectable butt shot in The Empire Strikes Back when he's fixing the Millennium Falcon. Sigh. Classic.
Anyway, after all the posters and hype about Ewan and Liam, I hoped that TPM would be as good. My heart sank after the first 10 minutes. What with organising the special effects, creating alien worlds and getting the dust off Yoda, Lucas had forgotten to sort out a decent script. Gone were any attempts at Han Solo wisecracks or Luke's teenage sulking when he has to check the droids in th'top field. Instead there were boring exchanges about trade agreements and incomprehensible utterings from the awful Jar Jar Binks. Ewan, mindful of the fact that he grows up to be Alec Guinness, affected a clipped hedge of an English accent which rang totally false. Both Liam and the Tartan Terror valiantly tried to work with what they were given, but they were fighting a losing battle.
A more serious travesty was costume design. In a film with two incredibly sexy actors and lots of desert, there was ample opportunity for Lawrence of Arabia britches and leather. However both Jedi Knights were swamped with huge hessian cloaks! How they managed the light sabre fights without tripping up was beyond me. Samuel L. Jackson had the briefest cameo role and even the appearance of R2D2 couldn't disguise the fact that the magic had disappeared. I felt that was a cheap trick, borrowed from the original trilogy to make up for TPM's shortcomings.
Go see The Mummy - it's far better!