Not as bad as you've heard, but worse than I'd hoped

Rating: 4/10 (20 May 1999)

Although I have seen every Star Wars movie the day it opened (I saw the first one in a half-empty theater!), I've never been the kind of totally crazed Star Wars zombie we've been seeing on the news and making fun of. My viewing record is unbroken, but based on this one I might just wait at least a few days when Episode II comes out ...
How was it? Well, nothing could be as bad as some of the reviews (the New Yorker treats it like a threat to Western civilization). But a lot of the negatives you've probably already heard are true. It has no sense of humor, period -- no Han Solo or even distant equivalent -- the "comic relief" is a floppy-eared CGI-generated Cajun-talkin' lizard man whose dialogue is 90% indecipherable, and not worth hearing when you can.
Natalie Portman is disappointing, and the Big Plot Secret is so easily solved that it only confuses an almost non-existent story. Liam Neeson and Ewan MacGregor look and act like they're desperate to be somewhere else. The voice of the head Gungan -- the floppy-eared Cajun-talkin' unfunny lizard men -- is Brian Blessed, a long way from Augustus in "I, Claudius".
Anything good to say? Well, it looks good, and sounds better (The credit card for John Williams the composer of "dum, Dummm, duh-duh-duh DUMMM dummm", got a bigger hand than Lucas). The drag race in the middle of the movie is fun, better-staged than the climax. Only two shots in the entire movie have no computer effects in them.
Should you see it? Draw your own conclusions. If you liked the first three you're unlikely to want to walk out. I remember how hyped I was seeing the first one, and of course I've changed in twenty-two years, but if the original opened today I'd still enjoy it ten times more than this.