When I was a kid...

Rating: 7/10 (4 June 1999)

The Phantom Menace (I think the name was an inside joke: The Fandom Menace) I find to have the same qualities as the first three. The movie sets standards for visual effects. The characters are archetypical, and there is not much to them. Now let's get down to specifics.
In my opinion, Jar Jar helped the movie and can expect to get a good cult following along the lines of Chewy and Boba Fett, But this will take a little while. I thought that his clumsiness could have been more volatile. It only really seemed contained to him.
Darth Maul did deserve more. If it was my movie to make, we would have seen more of the guy, but he would not have said a word beyond his original 4 lines. I would have had Kenobi get him in the second movie. But hey, who knows what tricks Darth Sidious has up his sleeve.
I thought that giving the force a little scientific background was risky. However, they only show that there is a science of getting jedi powers. The force is still the force and mystical as ever.
This is the first movie where I found myself wishing that there were more subtitles.
The best part of the movie was the casting of Ewan as Obi-Wan.
The light saber duels make Luke look like the amateur that he is.
The similarities of the male Skywalkers are nice.(wineing to your droid)
During the couse of the movie, I forgot that Portman was in "The Professional," Neesen was in "Schindler's List," MacGregor was in "Trainspotting" and "Brassed Off," and that the Captian was the African from "Highlander." This in my book is good acting as far as action movies go.
One thing I noticed is that it is an inverse to Episode4. The conflict is political rather than strictly military. Everyone is very aware of the Jedi. The bad guys are in hiding.
I like how Jake played Anikin mainly because you get the feeling that he might not be the right man for the job of fixing the universe.
The other actors I think excelled considering that this film has to fit with the others as part of a whole.
Two additional things missing were a funky alien tune(yeah empire did not have one, I know) and the Imperial Death March. This last puzzled me untill I made the realization that there was no empire to march to the march.
All in all I thought it set out to do what is was supposed to do, and was consistant with the other three movies. We have to remember that it was before the dark times, before the empire. In my book it lands somewhere between Empire and Jedi. It was good. I think the reason that so many were disappointed was because they remember Star Wars from their childhood. So they remember it better than it really was. Thus, when presented with different characters, it seems drab or out of place to them. We must keep in mind that Star Wars is an action movie. It is not a film. There is a big difference. Acting, plot and script are secondary to the story and presentation. After the third episode is complete, I believe that most will feel for these new characters as much as we do for the original ones.