Full of Sound and Fury--signifying nothing

Rating: Null/10 (26 May 2002)

Boy, I am amazed that this is in the IMDB top 250. It just goes to
show you that film goodwill in the form of Episodes 4-6 is not
easily destroyed by a movie that panders to the smash-em/blow
them up school of filmmaking that we got so tired of in the 90s. I
for one remember the wonder of seeing Episode IV back in 1977
and being absolutely blown away by its technical innovation while
identifying wholeheartedly with Luke and Chewy and gang. Now
we get a script that could have been written by shredding pages of
a New Age tome and pasting them together at random (am I the
only one who winced at everything that Yoda said?) And I thought
some of the political discussions on Crossfire on CNN were tough
to follow--has anybody figured out why there's going to be a war in
the first place (Lucas felt it was important for us to know, he spent
the better part of 15 minutes of the movie describing it to us in
detail). A pretty good cast here is more wasted than a Spring
Break student after a bottle of tequila--especially Natalie Portman,
who I am a big fan of, from the Professional through to Beautiful
Girls. Just when you think there is going to be a reprieve from the
relentless assault of the CGI and effects (the setup for when Luke
ultimately ends up living with his aunt and uncle in Episode 4
being a good example), you get another comic book battle of
millions of drones who you don't know blowing each other up. I
can paraphrase Billy Shakespeare here...this movie is full of
sound and fury, but it signified nothing, and it left me having an odd
out-of body experience. I can summarize this movie's heart in
three words--Jar Jar Binks.