Triumph of the imagination

Rating: 10/10 (21 May 1999)

Thus came tonight, the night the power of imagination conquered all. The night I saw Star Wars: The Phantom Menace.
I will fast forward to the end credits. The movie had just ended. Over two hours of insecure dialog, bad character development, out of this earth special effects, yet still a movie experience unlike any other.
Star Wars transcends its flaws of acting and writing and becomes something that only those who dare imagine can understand, as I try to convince myself.
To see this part separate from its sequels is to deem it unworthy of admiration. It is that context we carried with us into the theater that holds it together. Watching it should be out of curiosity to look back in time rather than to satisfy a nonexistent thirst caused by stronger episodes 4,5 and 6. Episode I is not Darth Vader's story as much as it is a tag-along-and-watch-boring-characters in breathtaking worlds. The characters don't change. The movie is a long setup to something that will come, and thus it never matures. Keeping that in mind, one should enjoy it as an invitation to passively observe another world.
The movie is a witness to how powerful man's imagination can be. The world we were drawn into for over two hours resided in somebody's head. I remember what Willy Wonka once said: "If you want to view paradise, simple look around and view it, anything you want to do it, wanna change the world there's nothing to it. There is no life I know to compare with your imagination. Living there you'll be free if you truly wish to be." What our eyes saw was, to say the least, a stroke of genius.
I kept wanting some of the actors to shut up so that I can enjoy watching the movie, and that's bad. They weren't saying anything smart, some of it was plain crap. Jake Lloyd was the best of the bunch; his chemistry with the queen was great. Liam had to rely on his own charisma. McGregor had none (his lines didn't help). Jackson was a big mistake in the casting. And wait until you find out how Anakin Skywalker was conceived.
The soundtrack is a definite buy.
George Lucas has given the children, the target of this film, a work of pure imagination, a feast for their eyes, that when combined with the rest will make a great lesson. The kids will enjoy this one more than we will, and they will learn from it more than we will, and that's great. Nobody dies gratuitously in this movie, and for that alone, I give it 5/5.
May the force be with our imagination.