Lucas—directing his first film since the original “Star Wars,” no less—moves his adventure at a brisk, straightforward pace with a classical balance between smaller character moments and giant action sequences. Sweeping panoramic camera motions allow us to consume the film’s fantastic landscapes, and potentially confusing races and battle sequences are choreographed and filmed so that no one asks who goes where. Fans of the original series will note that Ewan McGregor is reprising the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Jedi knight played as an old man by Sir Alec Guinness in the original trilogy, and that the sweet little boy Anakin Skywalker grows up into the demonic Darth Vader (voiced by James Earl Jones, whose only competition for the title of Greatest Voice Casting in the History of Cinema is Douglas Rain as HAL 9000).
If “The Phantom Menace” can be faulted for anything, it is that the characters this time around aren’t as memorable as those in the original trilogy. Only two stand out as genuinely unlikable: the grade-school Jake Lloyd as Anakin can’t really act and the much touted Jar-Jar Binks, a jovial alien completely rendered by digital effects, is just plain annoying. But the rest of the cast calmly holds its own against all the digital wizardry. Liam Neeson is effective as a wise, middle-aged Jedi knight, as is Samuel L. Jackson, who surprisingly never once utters the twelve-letter “m” word for which he has become so famous; and, while I can’t see him blowing up the Bridge on the River Kwai, Ewan McGregor is a passable Obi-Wan. But they are all only a shadow of the characters immortalized in the original trilogy: Mark Hammill’s wide-eyed farmboy Luke Skywalker who, in the course of the films, turns somber and withdrawn, Carrie Fisher’s spoiled brat Princess Leia, and Harrison Ford’s self-centered cynic Han Solo, a Rick Blaine in outer space. The only star that shines as brightly in “The Phantom Menace” as in the original trilogy is Frank Oz as the voice and puppeteer of the diminutive Jedi Yoda. Putting to shame the digital effects and, indeed, many of the human actors, the surprising subtlety and depth of Oz’s work reminds us how gifted the late Jim Henson was.
These minor complaints aside, “The Phantom Menace” is a jolly, exciting adventure through an improbable cosmos, and probably as much fun as any movie you’ll see from 1999.
Finished April 20, 2002
Copyright 2002 Friday & Saturday Night