Revenge of the Teddy Bears

Rating: 1/10 (17 October 1998)

How can any adult who enjoyed "Star Wars" and "The Empire Strikes Back" possibly find anything entertaining, or even interesting, about this abysmal, unimaginative travesty? A genuinely bad movie, truly awful in every possible way, "Jedi" features a screenplay aimed squarely at four year olds and absolutely terrible acting from an understandably embarrassed cast; in addition, the film offers us the shoddiest array of cheap, plastic-looking space aliens since Irwin Allen's "Lost In Space" tv series. Yes, I realize it is this very cheapness that endears the movie to a legion of kitsch loving fans, but, as a direct follow-up to "Empire," one of the most entertaining and inventive fantasy movies of the last twenty years, "Jedi" comes across as a particularly insulting spit in the face from George Lucas. And those godawful teddy bears! Is there anyone out there (over the age of four, that is) who doesn't cringe in horror at just the mere thought of those monstrously cute creatures?