Top 10 things wrong with this movie

Rating: Null/10 (4 November 2003)

1. There are no major human characters--not really. There are plenty of aliens and robots. There are Jedi. There are Sith Lords. There is a noble and brave princess. There is an angel/demon child who has a strange knack with engines. There is a virgin mother. But there is no character we can relate to in the way we could relate to Luke or Han, or even to an older and much more avuncular Obi-Wan.
The young Anakin wavers from silly to disturbing: I thought of Home Alone, Home Improvement, and The Omen. Shmi, his mother, seems to have momentarily misplaced her halo. Neeson and MacGregor as Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan are supposed to be mythic warriors, and are thus appropriately stoic, but while it's possible to admire them, it's not easy to relate to them, not unless you make your own clothes and live in Tibet or Calcutta or Berkeley or deep, deep, deep in the forest. A similar problem plagues Natalie Portman's Amidala, at least when she's in full regalia; the character is admirable and impressive, yes, but like an admirable and impressive porcelain figurine. As Padme on Tantooine Portman manages to inject the only presence of real human life into the movie, but the drug wears off much too soon. C-3PO is more sympathetic than anyone except Padme, and he is neither human nor especially likable. #2. Midi-chlorians. This is an embarrassing idea. First of all, the name: It's much more difficult to suspend our disbelief in the Force when it sounds as if it originates in chlorine-based sound files, or maybe in very small versions of Cloris Leachman. But more than the name, there is a problem with Lucas's need to make mystical energy a physical phenomenon. What kept the concept of the Force relatively safe from ridicule was that it remained hazy. We could fill in the blank spots for ourselves if we desired to fill them in at all. Now that we know that the Force can be measured more easily and precisely than cholesterol, it no longer fails to seem ridiculous.
#3. The virgin birth. Why? #4. PC and not PC. Lucas has managed the somewhat remarkable feat of creating a script that is too obviously politically correct in places and at least mildly offensive in others.
A small sample of the PC side of things: Most of the casualties in the movie are robot troops and guards. Women serve in combat much more visibly than in the other episodes, giving the impression that the later enemies of the Dark Side suffered a backlash against feminism. Anakin has a chubby but cute Rodian friend, who made me think both "Little Greedo there is in the fine tradition of the Muppet Babies" and "George Lucas must think I've gone to bed every night since 1977 thinking, 'You know, the only good Rodian is a dead Rodian. Damn that Greedo! And all of his kind! Damn them to hell!'"
On the not-so-PC side: The unscrupulous flying Frenchmen. The plotting yet cowardly Chinese. The whacked out yet supposedly amusing Rastafarian. The scene where Qui-Gon is impaled, the most graphic violent incident in the Star Wars saga until Darth Maul is sliced in half a few minutes later.
Lucas appears to be bending over backwards to respond to previous criticisms but completely unable to recognize that he's creating similar problems in the same script. It's as if a well-meaning but addled caucasian from 1939 was asked to write a screenplay in 1999. #5. Yoda's syntax. Already somewhat irritating in Empire, it was. Become even sillier, it has. And changed, is Frank Oz's voice? Up, is something strange?
#6. The climax of the battle for Naboo. The four-pronged plot of the fight between Jedi and Sith Lord, the battle on the plains, the Queen's entry into the palace, and the attack on the battleship was carried out fairly well, and then ruined by one of the biggest anticlimaxes in the history of movies. "Oops," says the little midi-chlorian bastard? "I think I may have accidentally hit the main reactor and saved everyone's life. That's swell!" What? Having elements of farce in the climax is fine. Having Anakin be uncannily lucky a few times before the moment of truth is fine, especially given that we know the results of his blood test. But "Oops"? He who is one with the Force often inadvertently fires proton torpedoes and blows up the Neimoidian battleship and saves the day? It reads like a fortune cookie written by an acid freak. #7.This is not really a criticism, but advice for the Trade Federation. If your robot army consists entirely of dummy terminals, consider making contingency plans. I can't believe Palpatine would contact you guys to clean out his bathroom, much less take over a planet run by a porcelainized Natalie Portman.
#8. The two-headed sportscaster. And I don't care what galaxy he's from. #9. Jar Jar Binks and the attempt to market the movie to two year olds. There were some goofy and unsuccessful attempts at humor in Episodes IV, V, and VI, but Jar Jar's appeal is too infantile and there is much too much of him in The Phantom Menace. The Ewoks in Jedi were a little too cute, but I could at least try to understand the appeal to children, and I never actually hoped, as I did with Jar Jar, that an Ewok would get caught in a crossfire and riddled with blaster holes. And the really irritating thing is that I can't even come up with a really good marketing reason for Jar Jar. I was six when I saw Star Wars, but I do not believe I would have been more enthralled by the movie if Luke and Ben had asked an accident prone Jawa to go to Alderaan with them. I was pretty enthralled by the movie as it was.
#10. Jar Jar Binks.
#11. But Jar Jar aside, here's the funny part. (And yes, I realized this is #11.) All of the above is true, but I still liked the movie. Though it didn't live up to my highest expectations and at times even made me cringe, it held my attention throughout and generally entertained the hell out of me.
The acting was far better in this movie than in the previous three. Despite the absence of an actual human part, the actors did what the script asked them to and did it well.
The digital effects were so good that with a few exceptions I forgot about them. They weren't as spectacular as we've encountered in a few movies of recent years, but they were spectacular enough and disturbed the action less.
The artwork. Whoever designed the spaceships gave a pleasing nod to Art Deco without getting too campy. The art direction, and especially the conception and design of Theed, the Naboo capital city, will probably end up deserving an Oscar.