Entertaining, but a mere shadow of its great forebears

Rating: 5/10 (17 June 2000)

George Lucas sacrifices story, theme, character and relationships in favor of wildly lavish production designs and overwhelming special effects. The movie is entertaining enough; the key pod-racing scene is a brilliant set piece; Liam Neeson's leading performance is excellent; the character of Anakin is original, enormously appealing and beautifully cast in the person of Jake Lloyd; the designs are gorgeous if overstuffed and the special effects are state-of-the-art. But the movie is nearly ruined by its most remarkable technical accomplishment: that intergallactic hybrid of Roger Rabbit and Step'n'Fetchit, Jar Jar Binks. Most of all, its thin story lacks any of the mythic richness of the first trilogy, and the characters, with the possible exception of Anakin, are barely introduced as paper cut-outs compared with the characters of the first three movies, and their relationships get no more interesting than the over-obvious effort to foreshadow the future of Anakin and Queen Amidala. Still, there is cause to hope that in the next two movies Lucas will turn enough of his attention away from his special effects to give full-bodied life to the new chapters of his great cinematic epic.