Visually stunning - but ultimately exhausting

Rating: Null/10 (29 May 1999)

I could still feel some of the old magic filtering through this movie, but it often seemed like it had too many layers of sound, effects, and bad acting trying to hide it.
Yes, I'm a Star Wars fan. Yes, I generally enjoyed the experience of the movie, mostly because the visuals were literally out of this world.
However, I fail to see the logic behind making a movie whose dialog is so hidden behind sound effects and music that you can't hear it. During the big race, I found myself yawning, just from the sheer noise. (I don't think that was the intended effect!) I had a good seat, in the middle of the theater, and yet I never managed to make out half of what the announcer was saying. Looked like it could have been funny.I just read how another viewer thought the movie was great, but only after he'd read it. I'm sorry. That doesn't cut it.
Didn't anyone else find it hard to follow the dialog? Isn't that something that should be caught long before the movie is released?
At several points I found myself thinking,"this could have been done really, really well by another director." Some scenes that were potentially dramatic highpoints were staged as throwaways, with too many distractions. Granted, there was a lot that had to be put into this film, but I can't help thinking that it could have been better organized and paced.
The unbelievably wonderful visuals were often flashed like MTV video scenes. I longed for a chance to sink into the story instead of being flogged every two seconds by another sharp cut or another orgasmic music crescendo. Did anyone else find the music of the big victory celebration really, really annoying? Maybe not..
And then, of course, there were the performances. Perhaps it was an attempt (in my opinion, a successful one) to make the CG characters seem more real, but the real actors could scarcely have seemed more wooden had they been played by puppets. I thought only Liam acquitted himself well and believably.
As to the story itself, basically it seemed sound and filled with potential.
The way parts of it were directed and cast did not convince me, though. Only after reading other comments here did it dawn on me that the queen was supposed to be a girl, and that she was the mom of Luke and his sis. Frankly, she came off more as a substitute mom, and the whole thought of her and Anakin as an "item" leaves me queasy.
The first view of our two Jedis really got my hopes up. Here are two who frighten a whole planet , who dispatch bad guys with a wave of their hands. Then they finally meet up with the "ultimate" bad guy, who thrashes the two of them soundly, and then gets thrashed himself by the least experienced of them. Their inconsistency was unbelievable. Some other plot device could have made the whole scene work - to me, it did not.
I hate to complain - it's just that, after so much time, effort, money, and talent, it seems like it could have been done so much better...