What a load of tripe!

Rating: 1/10 (16 July 1999)

I went off to see this film last night with a very neutral view of what to expect. I was sadly disappointed. It was terrible. I went with 3 other Star Wars fans. Not obsessives, just people who love the original for what it is.
This time though, the list of faults is long.
The plot was very like episode 4, which is fine, but it was all about this poxy little planet and a trade war. Oooohh. How exciting. The truth was, I just didn't care whether they all got wiped out or not. Actually, that's not true, if they had tortured Ja Ja to death I could have had something to celebrate.
The script was appalling. At moments I felt like they had picked up a page from Sunset beach by mistake. I suppose after the success of the other script nightmares of Jurassic Park, Deep Impact and several others, I shouldn't expect this to be any different.
As for the menace, what menace? It was all about as menacing as Barbie meets the cabbage patch kids. Darth Maul was just a meat-head Kiss fan, who stared alot.
Yes, the pod race was exciting, and the best bit of the whole film was the Sand people shooting at them and jumping up and down. However, it all looked rather as if it had been designed in order to convert to a games console package with very little adjustment.
All in all a truly unworthy prequel. Don't bother to go and see it, even the effects don't really make you go wow.