Rated:
Director: George Lucas
Starring: Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Jake Lloyd…
Summary: Palpatine rises to power in the Senate, laying the foundation for the building of the Empire.
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Review:
This was a great movie, with the most startlingly impressive special effects since I was wowed by Jurassic Park. Lucas took the time to create richly animated species of animals for the backgrounds, in addition to species for the characters. The worlds that were created in this film seemed very real. The plot moved a little slowly, but that is in keeping with the trilogy idea of the Star Wars movies.

Overall I think it was a great movie, in the tradition of the epic Star Wars movies that came before it. I had a few complaints about things that I felt could have been done better, though. For all the grand computer animation, some of the main characters’ mouths moved like puppets! Also, the various races had accents (good!) but they were established EARTH accents (bad!). As many before me have said, Jar Jar Binks was overbearing and could have been portrayed better.

No movie that has been anticipated for 16 years and hyped as much as this one could ever be criticism-free, and I think this movie was just fine. A lot of the scorn that this movie has seen is simply sour grapes, I think, that it wasn’t the be-all and end-all of movies that people had grown to expect (unrealistically). I’ll probably see it several more times while it is in the theaters.