If Yoda is so smart, why can't he form a proper sentence?

Rating: 10/10 (26 October 2006)

I had heard that this movie was the best of the latter chunk of the Lucas saga, and so decided to sit down and watch it. I retained my 11 year old to advise me on the more complex plot issues, but he got bored about half way through and left and I had to try to figure things out on my own. I think I figured out most of it.
As usual the effects with Lucas are great and he thinks up all sorts of weird beasties and funky spaceships that remind me of the hours spent doodling similar things in grade three. And so that part of the movie is a pleasure and about the same level of sophistication.
He made me believe that Yoda, who looks like Kermits great great grandfather, was a real puppet. Especially when falling through space. You would have thought he would just look like someone dropped a muppet, and he does, but still, he did it with style. Kermit would have been proud. Too bad he never took grammar in school, or maybe he's dyslexic or the writers are.
Also fun is watching various high powered acting talent delivering their comic book lines while using every skill at their disposal not to look embarrassed for being there or bored with standing around in front of the blue screen and waiting eagerly for their scene to get killed off. Samuel Jackson in particular deserves high praise for trying to play it as straight as possible while serving up lines that Adam West would be comfortable with. Jimmy Smits looks stoned half the time, which perhaps he was,at the suggestion of his agent. I hope they got paid handsomely for their work. They deserved it for their efforts.
I give full marks to Ewan MacGregor and Hayden Christenson for acting like they really believe the whole thing is legitimate. Bravo lads. That sword fight in the molten lava was totally unbelievable. They were totally cool and neither seemed to be sweating at all at the end of it which was about the only thing in the film that wasn't totally realistic and true to life. Seriously.
Tnen of course, there are the various wookies and the other critters and that weird crab thing that is General Grievous, who all manage to be fluent in English (except the wookies- what the heck are they anyway? Bears? Dogs? Walking rugs?- who make only that weird wookie sound yet appearto be technically proficient in operating space ships) You gotta love a movie character whose head looks like a vacuum cleaner or some kind of foot fungus and there were several.
I also appreciate the long length of the film which allows for the maximum amount of time watching the characters deal with the huge moral issues that will impact the entire galaxy while things fly about in the background. The little flying things reminded me of flies circling...uh.. whatever. No, I was glad that the film went on and on and on, because I could just sit and bath in the vision of Lucas.
The real miracle in this saga apart from the enormous money that it has made for Mr. Lucas is that after all these years of working on these movies he still uses the most basic and static camera positions and old fashioned editing, so that the movie truly is a comic book in every sense of the word. Kudoes to Mr. Lucas for refusing to either surrender to any of the new action movie tricks or to use more interesting and kinetic camera angles or to write a more subtle plot line because he knew they would have conflicted with the overall quality of his product and unfairly raised the expectations of his audience.
Truly a labour of love.