Even the Devil is Anaesthetized

Rating: 4/10 (19 May 1999)

In short: it stinks. Liam Neeson appears to be especially pained by the monotonously lame dialogue he has to speak, but all of the major characters seem to have no history, and no personality. The characters in the earlier series were always full of smart remarks, but none of that here, only the rather infantile humor of JarJar Binks. What's worse, there isn't even enough action to make up for the cardboard characters (and I'm being generous - cardboard at least bends). The final battle scene could have been great, but every time something gets going, Lucas cuts away from it. The devil-like creature Darth Maul has almost no lines, and we get no sense that he is truly evil. He shows up, does his light-saber thing, and that's that. Lucas should have shown us some scenes from his childhood where he tortures frogs and gives the other devil-kids wedgies, etc. I liked the first 2 Star Wars movies a lot, I thought the 3rd one was only ok, but it at least had some great battle scenes. This one is just bad.