Not as bad as I expected

Rating: 6/10 (9 June 1999)

First off, I'm not a "Star Wars" or SF fan (which is why I waited about three weeks before seeing the movie). Also, I heard the movie was aimed squarely at 12 year olds (I heard this from fans of "Star Wars"!), and added zero to the story. So I didn't expect much. Surprisingly I sort of liked it. It is too long, some sections left me really confused (Darth Vader is a virgin birth?) and at the end I just felt like I had seen another movie, no better or worse than an average one. First off, as said before it rambles on and on. This could haven been cut short by half an hour. Second, Lucas is not an actors' director--and it shows. McGregor and Neeson were so stone-faced I couldn't believe it. Portman was howlingly lousy. Admittedly, they were trying to react to something that wasn't there, but come on! They're actors--that's their job! As for Jar Jar Bink--he was annoying and very unfunny. All of his lines and antics met with stony silence from my audience. Only the actress who played Darth's mother showed any emotion. All that said, the special effects were superb with two standout sequences--the pod race and the fight between Obi-Wan, Qui-Jon(sp?) and Darth Maul. Those two sequences made up for the many shortcomings in the movie. All in all see it for the special effects. There's no good acting and the story is yawningly familar.