Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace Review

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace is probably the weakest of the main 6 Star Wars movies. It seems to only focus on minor aspects of a film, like the special effects, the atmosphere, etc, but it fails horribly at things like story, characters, action, and memorability. It's a shame too, as it was directed by George Lucas himself, who directed the original film, which is my favorite of the entire series. Also, I'm stumped to say THIS was the first Star Wars movie released in 3D. Come on, what happened to the originals? Aren't they some of your best films, Lucas? Surprisingly though, there were some things I liked that everyone else hated, but I'll get into that later. First, the story... It sucks. It's confusing, yet not in a good way that makes you think, just horribly put together. OK, Obi-Wan and this one guy nobody cares about go to some weird thing called Jar-Jar Binks, and then something happens, which leads them to a slave kid and his mother, and then they try to free him... That's my best explanation. It's impossible to follow and many questions are never answered. It's a mess of a story and you should just ignore it. The acting was not very good. McGregor sucked, Neeson sucked, Portman sucked, you get the picture. The only two people I really thought did a good job was Frank Oz as Yoda and Pernilla August as Anakin's mother. Now, I shall say my most controversial quote in any of my reviews ever, so stand back, you might just explode..... I thought Jake Lloyd did OK. He's a child, what do you expect? But FOR a child, he pulled off a decent amount of emotion and in my opinion, he wasn't all that bad. Well, except for when he says "This is Tense"! That was horrible. Now, what about the characters? Well, Anakin is a good character, and so is his mother, Yoda had some good lines, but Obi-Wan wasn't all that good, and everyone else was just AWFUL. Oh, and Jar Jar Binks. Ugh. I mean, he's not the worst character I've seen in a film, but he's just annoying and unnecessary. So, with all that said, "The Best and Worst of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace". The best is probably the special effects. Sure, they're not nearly as amazing as the Star Wars of the past, but as CGI goes, they look pretty cool, especially on Blu-Ray. Surprisingly, I thought the special effects in here were better than Episode II! Now, the worst. Well, Liam Neeson sucked, Jar Jar sucked, but the story is the worst. Like I said, it's just so uninteresting, I find it hard to call it a Star Wars film, as the story in the original three were planned out so well, and so easy to follow, it's outstanding. This is just a mess. So, final verdict: It's a bad movie, but it at least adds a few cool plot points to the Star Wars universe, the special effects are nice, a few action scenes, like the pod race, are decent, and a few actors actually do well. So, even though it's a bad movie, because of the special effects and action scenes, when the 3D release comes out, I do recommend watching it, as long as it's cheap and you don't expect much.

2/5