It's a Star Wars Movie

Rating: 7/10 (19 May 1999)

The good news: It's a Star Wars movie which fits in nicely with all the previous adolescent action-adventures. The bad news: It's a Star Wars movie, so it's not much--and I'm a little disappointed that it's not very well distinguished from the other three. My personal critical hierarchy forms a diamond shape: At the top, The Empire Strikes Back, far below, Return of the Jedi, and in the middle, each superior to the other in different ways, are the two Lucas-directed episodes. I think Lucas is a master-shot master, but very little else about his directorial style has improved over the years. I would have expected more originality in the intervening years, and I couldn't help thinking that the entire enterprise could have been measurably improved if Lucas had the humility to ask Spielberg to switch roles with him and produce the film for him. There is no scene in Phantom Menace NO SCENE that could not have been improved by Spielberg's touch. But that which remains is only as disappointing as this stuff generally is. Don't listen to the anti-hype of critics who were part of the virtual hype (apparently the enthusiasm was a half-mile long and a half-inch deep--my showing last night wasn't even nearly sold out). Now the hype machine, having seen that it's after all just a Star Wars movie, wishes to distance itself from what they were complicit in creating. After all, it CAN be enjoyed on exactly the same level of entertainment as the others (except for Jedi, which had the Ewoks.)