Rated Z - as in "Zzzz..."

Rating: 5/10 (26 May 1999)

Anyone who saw "The Godfather, Part III" knows what happens when you try to make a movie-sequel with one eye on the "legacy" of the pic instead of both eyes on the story.
There are way too many things to go into but I'll mention three: 1) I thought Anakin comes into this story way too young. 2) Young Obi-Wan Kenobi isn't wild enough - "young & wild" go have been in the movies for decades - they're great when they work together. We should meet him earlier, when he hasn't yet learned Jedi discipline. Nor should he quite learn all of it for some time after. 3) I couldn't keep track of which was the queen and which was the servant girl.
And now, for the cliches: I wanted to like this movie but I couldn't. All the right Star Wars ingredients are there but they just don't gel. There's really nobody to root for and we already know what's going to happen to the kid.
It seems to me that Lucas can't decide whose story this is: the Skywalker family or the Jedi Knights. They're "inextricably linked" but, like I said, in this pic they don't quite gel.