Pretty good.

Rating: 6/10 (19 May 1999)

***
This movie, after it all, is pretty good. It is visually astounding, incredibly exciting, and sometimes, annoying. The movie has many aspects put in so that children under 12 will enjoy it more, although I doubt that they did. The children that are immature enough to laugh at the idiocy of Jar Jar Binks(an insanely irritating, unnecessary character) probably will be too distracted by the bright colors and shiny things to actually listen to the dialogue. The story is uneven. It seems unsure of what it wants to focus on, Anakin or the invasion, so it unsuccessfully attempts to connect the two. Now, this is just a set-up movie and I have hopes that Episodes 2 & 3 will be great. This hope is due in part to the fact that the finale of the movie was great. After watching for two hours, I finally cared what happened to Obi-Wan and the rest. I won't reveal the ending, but let's just say it was awesome. Since, however, few scenes of the invasion were shown, I found myself not caring about what happened to the people of Naboo. The jedis were exciting and Darth Maul (not used enough!) was great. It seems as if I've bashed it a lot, but the movie was pretty good.