commercial for Industrial Light and Magic

Rating: Null/10 (26 June 1999)

Aside from the fantastic set designs and special effects, especially the very well-rendered CGI characters, this was not a very good movie. Some reasons:
1. Completely uninspired acting by otherwise competent actors. 2. A boring, unoriginal screenplay that amounted to "big, bad Federation takes over small, helpless planet, and Jedis save the day." Big deal. It took George ten years to come up with that? Oh yes, then there was the highly original subplot of "small boy leaves parent (who in this case didn't seem to care very much) to become Jedi." Where have we seen that before? 3. Almost no character development or meaningful interaction, to the extent that I didn't care what happened to anyone. 4. Jar-Jar, a stupid, extremely unfunny waste of time and effort whose ONLY apparent function was to sell more toys to pad George's pockets. 5. Completely uninspired dialog that hampered the actors. There was nothing with even the dramatic impact of "I love you." "I know." 6. A worthless role for talented Samuel Jackson, who was relegated to sitting around and solemnly pontificating about whether the kid should become a Jedi.
In summary, if you want to see a long commercial for the (considerable) talents of the people at Industrial Light and Magic, see The Phantom Menace. But if you want to see a good movie that focuses on the traditional elements of a good movie, look elsewhere. And PLEASE don't buy any Jar-Jar toys.