Great effects, awesome Jedi duels, but lacks soul

Rating: 8/10 (28 June 1999)

Ok, so I saw it. The backgrounds are awesome, the love of detail as immaculate as any other movie. The ground wars vivid, a bit short on the space battles maybe. The story, well a bit naive in some respects and some aspects not very well explained or a bit rough, lots of parallels to the original trilogy (final saber duel, battle against "death star" type ship). The special effects - awesome, especially the computer simulations of the aliens were a lot better than I had anticipated. The light saber fights - make all others pale in comparison. This is what jedis should move like - they are really kick-a** smooth fighting machines. and yet I didn't think the movie had it. It lacks soul, it lacks the breathtaking sort of exhilaration of the others, you don't sit there spellbound and route for Han Solo or anybody. you just sit there and go - hey, that's cool, ooh, that's nice..., but it never grips you (except for the sword fights maybe, but then they really have it - it's not some gasping little boy Skywalker hacking away at a bad boy Vader, these are sleek and lethal bad a** jedis. Possibly the pod race as well). I'm not sure whether it's bad acting and a weak story/dialogue that destroys the Star Wars magic here, but the movie is sorely lacking here. At least the star ships are sleek, even beautiful.
So it's a feast for the eyes but has no soul, no true heroics, no laughter (jar jar is silly, not funny), nothing. Just great pictures. too bad - let's hope things go upward from here...