A film or a special effects demonstration?

Rating: 6/10 (16 July 1999)

Now don't get me wrong, I enjoyed watching The Phantom Menace and thought it well worth going to see, but it was clear to me that George Lucas' focus was in the wrong direction. Was it necessary for every single scene to have some kind of CGI enhancement no matter how small? That isn't what made the first ones so good. He was too eager to be visually spectacular (the big fish, even bigger fish bit was decidedly ill-advised). Though the locations were spectacular and fantastic, they were too abundant, detracting from the characters and the story which should have been the focus of the film. Another problem was the apparent determination to fit everyone and everything else in there, the sandpeople didn't need to be there, but they were, pointlessly, just to satisfy the 'trainspotters', the Jedi Mind Trick was slightly overused (although at one point to good comic effect) and in the apparent desire to satisfy the nerdiest of all Star Wars fans, a scientific explanation for the force was given! Surely the whole point of it, why we were so taken with it, was the pure clean mystery about it.
I also thought the score had too much brand new music (at least to my ears) that just wasn't good enough, the scores to the old films are absolute all-time classics and that music should have been used more.
Other than that, the film is an obvious success, the actors (none of whom could be called a lead, they're all supporting roles) do their jobs well enough, Darth Maul's brief appearance (and it was too brief for my liking) gave us a sword fight Errol Flynn would have dreamed of, and the story was nicely set up for a continuation of Palpatine/Sidious' rise to ultimate power. The pod race, a brilliant rip-off of Ben-Hur's (or is it Spartacus') chariot race was also a fantastic set piece though marred distinctly by the two headed American ESPN commentators.
Though I felt slightly disappointed (without particularly high hopes in the first place) I still thoroughly enjoyed the film, but don't consider it to be as good as the original which started the whole thing.