Yipeee! Erm, yeah right.

Rating: 8/10 (24 April 2002)

I felt compelled to write a review for The Phantom Menace, the dark horse of the Star Wars saga. Nowadays, it seems that either you love it or hate it. Personally I had a great time watching it, me being this huge Star Wars fan who loves nothing more than being transported into another world far, far away. The venerable Qui-Gon Jinn is well played by Liam Neeson, and Ewan McGregor is an inspired - or make that great - choice to play Obi-Wan Kenobi. As usual, Ian MacDiarmid gave us an exciting, subdued performance that underlies his sinister nature.
Okay, so the movie may does not have the same wit and energy as the original trilogy, nor its more intimate settings, due to the expanded sets and gargantuan CGI environments. Nevertheless, its still a fun ride, and we get some early ideas on how the Empire may got its foothold in a form of Darth Sidious aka the Emperor.
However some things still bugs me. There are glaring, sinful flaws that George Lucas somehow put in the film without even realising it. Anakin Skywalker was played terribly! Whether that problem is caused by either Jake Llyod's poor acting or Lucas' poor directing, we will never, ever know. The young Jedi-to-be managed to be emotionless throughout the movie, and when he does show some emotion we were instead given the god-awful line "Yipeee!" I don't know how I managed not to vomit in the theatre years ago ... its much worse than Luke's whiny voice when he complains about getting power converters at Toshi station. The scene when Anakin tells Padme about beautiful angels was just wooden and laughable too.
Another problem is Jar-Jar Binks, but not because of his appearance and his silly accent, because he is actually quite cool. But I sincerely believe that he is a character that tries desperately to be funny, a sort of a wink-wink-nudge-nudge appeal to the kiddies, so his jokes often fell flat because there's nothing spontaneous about his situation. No wonder many fans ended up hating him.
I watched this film with wide-eyed wonder, as much as I did when I first saw the original three many years ago. Thus I enjoyed it thoroughly, but that experience is somewhat marred by a couple of bad choices from Lucas himself.