Exciting and very enjoyable with some small flaws.

Rating: 2/10 (19 May 1999)

Ok, first off I must admit I am a HUGE Star Wars fan and have been since I saw A New Hope. However I also have a hobby of giving movie reviews, so just before the movie started I forced myself to consider this just a normal movie until I'd seen it. With all the mixed reviews that have been thrown around in the last couple of weeks I got pretty nervous that Phanton Mennace would suck. Fortunately it definitely did not. Lets start with the best part of the movie and I hate to repeat what everyone else has already said but I will, the special effects. Visually this movie is nothing less than spectacular, the underwater scene was stunning, the lightsaber battle at the end was the best one yet, the pod race was one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my life (even people who hated the movie liked that part), the creatures were seamless, and the ships were overwhelming. Lucas and ILM didn't leave out any details no matter how small, the shadows, the light coming from different angles, the chrome on shiny ships, take a look it's all there. Everyone always cuts down on the acting but I didn't think it was bad at all, Neeson was really good as usual, McGreggor was playing a very different role than he's used to but he still did a good job, Portman was great, she was one of the big highlights of the film, Lloyd wasn't as bad as people made him out to be, I mean come on people, the kid's only eight how good do you expect him to be? The plot seemed a little bit weird considering the whole thing was about trade taxation, doesn't really seem like a star wars plot does it? But I'm pretty confident that everything will get straightened out in the next two films. My biggest complaint about the movie was a floppy eared alien named Jar Jar Binks, this character was just flat out stupid, I really think he should have been left out of the picture entirely, I couldn't believe that Lucas would throw in a character that bad just for a few laughs from his 6 year old audience. Another smaller flaw in the movie was the incredible luck all the characters had, when they're underwater a big fish attacks them and a bigger fish eats it, then they get attacked again and the same fish eats the second one. Also there's a part where Jar Jar Binks gets his foot attached to the wires of a downed attack droid and when he tries to shake it off the blaster in the dead droid's hands goes off three times killing three more droids, I wish that one of those shots had hit Jar Jar right in his stupid looking face, god I hate that guy. All in all it was definitely a very entertaining movie with all the charm of the original three and with cool new special effects to boot. On a scale of 1 to 10 if Jar Jar binks hadn't been in it I would have given it a 10 but because of that clumsy freak I give it a 9.