A Legend Unravels...

Rating: 4/10 (13 May 2009)

Twenty years ago, I liked Michael Jackson. Everyone did. Twenty years ago, I liked STAR WARS. Everyone did. Look what happened to Michael Jackson. Look what happened to STAR WARS.
Both these entities were done in NOT by lack of funding, backstabbing competitors or unbalanced advisors. Ironically, they brought their downfalls on themselves through a surfeit of funding which removed them from any competition and tipped them into insular universes within their own strangely shaped heads.
All that said, STAR WARS: EPISODE I - THE PHANTOM MENACE is simply amazing. It is absolutely astounding how much nothing this much money can buy.
Now remember, PHANTOM MENACE was birthed into the world long after the STAR WARS canon entered world vernacular, like red corpuscles in the Earth's bloodstream. So it is all the more painful to see the cancer of The Prequels eating our childhood dreams away.
George Lucas (Mr. Insular himself) writes and directs and ruins as he goes. If he had just surrendered his choke-hold on his writer's pen and precious director's chair, we wouldn't have this facsimile of a movie sullying the legend that he himself brought to life 20 years ago.
An Even Longer Time Ago...
Movie opens with two Jedi Knights, young "padawan" Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his "Master," Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson, with a THUNDERDOME mullet), on a diplomatic mission to resolve a Trade Federation dispute. Immediately, we are lost: not only because George Lucas thrives on cloaking the simplicity of his stories with obfuscating politics, but because no one will admit that the Jedi translation of "padawan" is "bitchboy."
Qui and Obi immediately get into trouble, like a couple of intergalactic Gilligans; light sabers sizzle, robots frizzle, and the two flat-faced aliens who sent the robots realize they are neck-deep in shizzle.
This opening sequence is actually the best part of the movie, as we get to see real Jedi in action - their prowess spoken of in three films and only marginally displayed by neophyte Luke, smug Darth and doddering Alec Guinness.
Master and Bitchboy then flee the T-Fed conference after blowing things up and land on a planet where they meet Jar Jar Binks. Proof positive that George Lucas hates his fans.
Meanwhile, Natalie Portman is learning her lines to play Queen Amidala, reciting them without a shred of emotion, and Lucas is filming all her rehearsal takes in funny wigs.
Qui, Obi and Jar crash-land on Tattooine (something to do with the hyper-drive that no one ever fixes properly) and meet an irritating slave boy called Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) and his virgin mother (Pernilla August). And here, ladies and gentlemen, is George's greatest casting mistake ever, even worse than non-actor Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, even worse than non-actor Hayden Christensen as teen Darth, even worse than that non-actor Empire extra with the phony looped dialog, "Holding her is dangerous. Word of this gets out, it could generate sympathy for the rebellion in the senate" - here is the future Darth Vader, a puling, smart mouth, blond American non-actor kid who looks like a refugee from a '70's sitcom, playing the icon that haunted our nightmares as we slept on our Star Wars bedsheets.
By now, Liam Neeson is not even phoning it in - he's faxing it, his eyes so glazed over with boredom he never once focuses on all the imaginary CGI fluff around him, his inflection never rising above audition level.
Padding ensues with a pointless "pod-race," and the Jedi win the slave boy's freedom. Before they can leave the planet with him, they are attacked by Gene Simmons - my mistake, it wasn't Gene, just someone from the KISS Army, Darth Maul. Really mad about something - maybe that KISS did that reunion tour without him.
Political intrigue ensues, our eyes glazing over like Qui-Gon's in front of a green screen. The Darth boy annoys the crap out of us. R2-D2 goes Action Trashcan Hero. C-3PO is naked. Samuel L. Jackson (as Jedi Mace Windu) tries to sound Shakespearean and still sounds like Jules from PULP FICTION - seems you can take the pimp-master out of the PULP, but you can't take the... And Yoda floats around on a hover-chair like some hedonistic Bob Dylan, quoting platitudes until we vomit like abandoned children.
No two synopses for PHANTOM MENACE can agree on what PHANTOM MENACE is really about, except that it introduces to cinema the most annoying kid in the world and claims he's Darth Vader. What can really be learned from these Prequels, except that there was a lot more sky traffic - and the Empire seemed to have cleared up that problem by EPISODE IV.
Big Government. Who needs it? We do. If they can clean up sky-traffic like that, go right ahead and keep phantom menacing me, I don't care - as long as I can get across town for a Hefeweisen with a buddy without busting a blood vessel stuck in the belly of a steel snake and giving the finger to ten jerks who drive as if they owned the skies like the Trade Federation...
And like Big Government, PHANTOM MENACE talks too much, dazzles with special effects, overdoses on misdirection - and says nothing.
--Review by Poffy The Cucumber (for Poffy's Movie Mania).