Star schlock

Rating: 3/10 (4 June 2006)

So let me be the naysayer, maybe the only one. This movie has the artistic merit of a poor comic book. But maybe that's what the audience wants. The dialogue is barely two dimensional. The characters, under apparent Gestalt therapy, discover in the end who is good and who is evil, for that is what all these movies are about. Yes, the special effects are special...they are especially good. But it seems that all of the writer's effects were designed to accommodate them. They drive the movie, not the dialogue or the people.
Yes, it does answer a lot of questions about how the Imperial War started. I probably could have lived a happy life not knowing. The idea of a prequel is a tool best not used, frankly. I have yet to see it used successfully, but attempted so many times by film makers to milk another dollar out something popular. Although they didn't invent the device, they certainly have been the ones to exploit it to its worst ends.
Maybe children are fascinated by such movies, but anyone who has had to experience life can hardly find this anything similar to it. Although Ian McDiarmid did try to deliver his lines with sagacity and evilness, if he saw himself flying about, upside down, round and round, he must have surely have burst out laughing as I did.
Movies must present the verisimilitude of some reality, even if its one in the far distant future. The dialogue wasn't realistic. The characters were a mere pastiche. The acting was good for a high school play, but no more. The music was just more of the same and as unimaginative as the rest of the movie.
The only good feature is that there surely won't be more of these chapters, for if I have to listen to Yoda yodel one more mangled sentence structure, scream I will.