Overhyped? Nahhh!! Feed me, O Lord Lucas!

Rating: 7/10 (9 April 2000)

Well, it always happens, doesn't it? You wait, and you wait, and you wait for something, and inevitably it doesn't turn out to be nearly as good as you wanted it to be. The Phantom Menace is by no means a failure, but it does have some problems. Probably the best way to look at it is to compare it to other sci-fi films, not to other Star Wars movies. It's going to suffer in comparison to the others in the series, but it IS better than most of the sci-fi drek that's out there.
If you have not seen the first three (or is that the second three?) Star Wars movies, two things come to mind. First, WHY NOT? Second, you won't understand a lot of the nuances of this latest installment, in which case you shouldn't even bother with this review; you should check yourself into a halfway house that'll make you watch each Star Wars movie over and over again for 24 hours straight.
Now, for those of you who did see the other movies, and somehow avoided this one when it was in the theater (shame on you!), rest easy. You'll probably still enjoy it on the small screen, provided your small screen isn't a 10-inch black and white number. The effects come across surprisingly good on TV. What's really interesting, though, is that when Star Wars first came out in 1977, the special effects were about two decades ahead of their time. Now, the effects are still state-of-the-art, but the rest of the industry is a lot closer to George Lucas's company now than it was 22 years ago, so we're not as overwhelmed as we were then.
I won't bore you with plot details. Let's just say there are a lot of droids, there are empathetic, Ewok-like beings, there are lightsaber duels, and there are some cool battle scenes. What slows this production down a little are the incongruity of the Jar Jar Binks character (WHY?), and the somewhat slow pacing. For the other Star Wars movies, it felt like a lot of action was packed into a 100-minute movie; for Phantom Menace, it seemed like a lot of non-action was packed into a 120-minute movie.

Bottom line is this: When I saw this movie in the theaters, I loved it! Not as good as the first or third Star Wars movies, but still very good. And now that I have it on video, I'm gonna love it even more often.