Could have been awesome, watered down by stupid lizard cartoon character

Rating: 6/10 (20 May 1999)

I was pretty hyped about seeing the next great Star Wars movie, but I tried to calm myself and to have realistic expectations before seeing it. I thought the movie was awesome from the beginning, but as it progressed my opinion of it slowly deteriorated. The special effects were by far the best of any Star Wars movie so far, but the other elements seemed to cancel them out. I understand that you can't expect great acting from a little kid, but little Anakin was a central part of the movie. The annoying computer generated cartoon-like character that tagged along for the entire movie was not though. His annoying speech and goofball antics were only mildly amusing, and became just plain stupid as time went on. The pod racing scene and the Jedi fight scenes were very well done. The final outside battle between Federation droids and poorly armed natives had EWOK written all over it however. That along with the final celebration/award ceremony scene showed a complete lack of creativity. They were ripped almost straight out of the endings of A New Hope and ROTJ.
I definitely think it was worth seeing, and I only hope that in the next movie they sacrifice the slapstick humor and mushy little boy scenes for some real story and awesome action that I love the other Star Wars movies for.