Mindless Mental Masturbation for Cinema Retards only

Rating: 1/10 (17 January 2017)

This review originally appeared in the Korea Herald, in 1978 under the headline STAR WARS comes to Korea.
"Star Wars", I am sad to say, is such a piece of dreck that it is hardly worth talking about, but since it's my job to discuss films of all types I will add a few words to the mounds of hyperbole that have preceded its arrival. Three words say it all; mindless mental masturbation -- from beginning to end with a plot and devices geared to the mind of a pre-school child this all-time turkey has no redeeming features whatsoever -- unless things like dueling with neon tubes can be deemed redeeming. The most interesting scene in the movie takes place in a barroom with ugly spacelings of every ilk including a shaggy reject from Planet of the Apes, slobbering in their Makkoli (cheap Korean joy juice similar to pulque) -- but even this scene is interesting only for its grotesqueness. The much-vaunted special effects, the klunky space vehicles and the robots who ride them, are literally ridiculous. The Korean audience I watched it with applauded politely at the end when the main goodie finally got the main baddie, but it had neither the spontaneity nor the zest of the earlier applause at "Jaws". (I saw both the same day). It is hard to account for the phenomenal international success of this film and I will refrain from theorizing on this subject beyond observing that far more people go for McDonald's hamburgers than for chateaubriand. What is strange here is that so many people are willing to pay the box office equivalent of chateaubriand prices for the movie equivalent of McDonald's leftovers.
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Bottom Line:Mindless Mental Masturbation with no redeeming features. For arrested minds only.