I want the last 16 years of my life back spent waiting for this lousy film to be released!

Rating: 1/10 (27 March 2005)

OK, first of all, I realize this movie has been out for several years but frankly, it's taken me this long to cool down and write a review - hell, I just need to get some things off my chest!
Soooooooooo awful!!!! This movie is an abomination when compared with the original trilogy. (Yeah, I'm one of those thirty-something purists!! >:) The writing was horrible, the dialogue was unbelievably cheesy, and the plot was just plain dumb. I saw the film on opening night and I swear, I actually FELL ASLEEP during the second half of the film. I keep trying to finish watching the damned thing (my husband went out and bought the DVD behind my back..lol), but I just can't seem to stomach this crud for more than a few minutes.
For instance, Liam Neeson's portrayal of Qui-Gon Jinn just paled in comparison to Alec Guiness' Obi-Wan Kenobi, and I'm normally a big Liam Neeson fan. But then, that was one of the film's biggest problems: the unspeakably lame script. For example, all during the film, Neeson's Qui-Gon (and Ewan MacGregor's ObiWan, for that matter) kept spouting off "May the Force be with you" the way someone would say "Have a nice day" - totally shallow and unbelievable as a devout Jedi knight. Alec Guiness' Ben Kenobi, on the other hand, brought a depth and sincerity to the character that hasn't been replicated anywhere in Episode One.
And do you remember that scene when Anakin is leaving his mother's house and asks if he'll ever see her again? Her response was to "look at what your heart tells you." Um, OK, not bad for some half-baked after-school special, but then compare that scene with one of the more sentimental scenes from the original Star Wars (Episode Four) and you see how trite it really is: remember the part of Episode 4 when Luke's Uncle Owen forces him to postpone his application to the academy and an angry Luke stalks off from the house to stare longingly at the horizon? There is absolutely no dialogue, just music, but you can see all the emotion of Luke's impatience, frustration, and disappointment in his face without him ever uttering a word.
As for Natalie Portman's character...how many costume changes did this chick go through? And she still never fought off stormtroopers and underwater garbage-compacter creatures like Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia!
OK, I realize I could go on (I won't even start on Jar-Jar Binks, but in all fairness, ROTJ did have ewoks...), but the point is: the movies in the original trilogy, especially Episode Four, were great because of their simplicity. The films were the archetypal Hero's Journey, set to a sci-fi background, nothing more. But their simplicity is exactly the reason they were so successful. The didn't NEED all the artificial, computer-generated crap to be good.