A light saber too far?

Rating: 7/10 (12 July 2005)

For all the die-hard fans, this film is a dream come true. However, one of the film's strengths, it's special FX, is also a major weakness. Weakness in the sense of too much of a good thing and WAAAAAAY too many light-saber duels.
The opening sequence continues in the tradition of the WOW/SOCKO openings of the previous films. However, BECAUSE of these too-numerous-to-count incredible effects what occurs is actually plain confusing. "Less is more" would have been useful here.
If one ignores the physics of space, then one can accept what happens here and I'm sure this will only disturb the more discerning audience member. That said, Mr. Lucas could have been less "childish" and more scientifically "precise" and still attained his WOW factor. Unfortunately, it has been evident for several films now that toy revenue drives the creative here. Oh well.
What Mr. Lucas achieves here is what we all paid our tickets for, the story of how Darth Vader emerges. Mr. Lucas has a credible answer to all of our questions and ties up the Star War loose ends very well.
What is a continuing failure for Mr. Lucas is inability to write warm dialog. Even if one allows for the genre of the sci-fi movie serials of old that Mr. Lucas recreates and thus the painful words uttered by the actors, one can only feel the pain for Samuel L. Jackson as his character must utter some of the worst, and dead weighted lines in cinematic history. A far cry from "Pulp Fiction" for Mr. Jackson. I trust the paycheck eases the pain.
If one ignores the subtle (and not-too-subtle) patina of liberal political overtones that Mr. Lucas (the French will embrace Mr. Lucas) puts forth (great contrast to the opposite political overtones in "Batman Begins") and I suspect most can, the film serves as a fine sci-fi epic.
I suppose the film qualifies as a family film in that all the slaughter is usually befalling robots and therefore no blood. However, it IS ironic that for all of Mr. Lucas' liberal pretensions, he certainly is not sheepish in that violence IS the answer for his protagonists.