The Farcical Menace More Like

Rating: 3/10 (8 December 2002)

Never been a STAR WARS fan and I fail to see what the fuss was about with the original trilogy , but I`m shocked as to how even the most die hard fan could have enjoyed this movie . In fact I`ll be even more blunt - I`m surprised as to how the film company allowed George Lucas to release this movie !
First of all there`s absolutely no coherance to the script . The first 25 minutes are composed of characters escaping from CGI monsters only to be confronted by other CGI monsters ( Is this why it`s called THE PHANTOM MENACE ? ) then some vague mention of trade wars then it`s back onto the FX again . Not that the FX are up to much even the explosions are obviously done by CGI , no technical triumphs here . And the other technical aspects are very poor especially the editing . Has everyone failed to notice the tme discrepancys between scenes ? We see one character captured by war droids then it cuts to another scene which seems to last several minutes then it cuts back to the war droid scene where it seems no time has passed at all. THE PHANTOM MENACE is full of this haphazard editing which leads me to believe it wasn`t edited at all. But the two things that really got my goat were the war driods and the acting .
First of all the war driods are complete wimps ( And yes they are CGI ) I mean we have about three dozen droids armed with lazer guns trying to kill a couple of Jedi knights armed with light sabres . Guess who wins ? Correct . This lack of a credible enemy undermines an already poor film where we know that our heros will never be in serious danger now matter how many driods they come up against . A few people have made similar complaints about FELLOWSHIP OF THE RINGS , but the enemy in FELLOWSHIP have identical weapons whereas here the good guys are heavily outgunned as well as being heavily outnumbered and it`s laughable to watch a small handfull of people waving their light sabres against hundreds of well armed droids.

Secondly the acting . We can sit here and discuss what " Bad " acting is . For me the worst type of acting is wooden acting . Gasp in amazement as a host of well regarded stars read their lines as if they`re reading out a shopping list . Neeson is wooden , Jackson and Stamp make no impact but worst of all is Portman whose performance is so bad it has to be seen to be believed and which left me scratching my head puzzled as to why she got payed for her performance . The only two performances that stuck out was Frank Oz and Ewan McGregor and even then that`s down to his implaceble irritating accent.
And before anyone accuses me of not liking the fantasy genre I will say I absolutely loved FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING and will be booking my ticket to see THE TWO TOWERS when its released . New Line Cinema know a masterpiece when they fund one