The Phantom Movie

RICHARD CORLISSThis might be the most needless review ever to appear in TIME. It will enlighten few, enrage many. It will dissuade no one from seeing Star Wars: Episode I--The Phantom Menace or reseeing it a dozen times. It may achieve no goal but to confirm the received opinion that critics are vindictive prunes who take pleasure only in being displeased. Don't believe the critics! shouted one first-day fan to the CNN cameras. The critics know nothing! We know that we do not matter, yet we must speak. And so here--from the critic who wrote that Titanic was artistically dead in the water--goes nothing.The Phantom Menace--surely the most avidly awaited, assiduously hyped film since Gone With the Wind 60 years ago--is a space-age vehicle that creaks. Sleekly designed and smartly upholstered, it seems robot-driven, untenanted by humans. Maybe this is the future of movies: digitized, with fabulous detailing and performances that can be morphed to arid perfection. If so, no thanks. We'll take Casablanca.

George Lucas has proved, with the Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies, that he is a superb producer, a canny reviver of old movie forms, a wizard manipulator of tomorrow's special effects. But on the set, saying Action and Cut for the first time in 22 years, he is an indifferent director. He doesn't bring his own visions to persuasive life. As drama, the film lacks art and heart. And by heart we don't mean the elevated sentimentality and specious nobility of such audience favorites as Life Is Beautiful and The Full Monty. (Is there anyone we haven't offended yet?) You don't need a child in jeopardy to make compelling drama. You need narrative drive and attention to character nuance; they give sizzle and elegance to a glance, a line of dialogue, a scene and, shot by shot, a movie. All that is missing here. Many scenes have the feel of a first run-through by actors trying on their characters like off-the-rack costumes.

We may be setting the bar too high--as high as the movie's hype. As one woman said upon leaving an early screening, What do you want for $9? What you get in The Phantom Menace is panoramic entertainment with several terrific set pieces of action, stalwart acting from the Brits (and some very raw work by the kids), a precise, luscious visual design, a multilevel climactic battle and a funeral pyre that echo Return of the Jedi, and a triumphal coda from the first Star Wars film (1977). All that, and a lot of talk.

The plot has long been familiar to anyone with access to a computer or magazine. Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and his apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), hoping to settle a dispute between the flabby Republic and an insurgent Trade Federation, find Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman) on the planet Naboo. Diverted to Tatooine, they meet the boy Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), who has a mysterious force--perhaps the Force. They amass for a face-off against battle droids and the malefic Darth Maul (Ray Park).

PAGE 1|

The plot is more complicated than this--and much chattier. Even the opening is talky. Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic, the now familiar trapezoidal text-crawl tells us. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute. Immediately one is perplexed. A summary made sense in the earlier films; they were episodes IV, V and VI in the grand fable, and as continuations of an initially untold saga, they required some elucidation. But what's the need for back-story text in a tale that is just beginning? Can it be that Lucas was unable to dramatize these events, so he put them in the crawl? That would explain the gobs of dry exposition, devoted to blustering, filibustering debates on taxation and elections. It's all very edifying. Like ... school.

This is the work of Lucas the compulsive chronicler of his own imaginary galaxy. But there are other Lucases. One is the grownup kid who loves wise heroes and fast cars. That Lucas created a terse, looming Jedi knight in the person of Qui-Gon, and orchestrated a spectacular, turbo-thrust drag race through sculpted desert rock that consumes 12 minutes and most of the audience's adrenaline supply.
There is also the Lucas who wants to dazzle filmgoers with his luxurious bestiary. The Gungan klutz Jar Jar Binks, who talks (sometimes unintelligibly) like a Muppet Peter Lorre and walks as if he had springs for legs, is more annoying than endearing. But the junk dealer Watto is a little masterpiece of design: cinnamon stubble on his corrugated face, chipped rocks for teeth, the raspy voice of Brando's Godfather speaking Turkish, hummingbird wings that give him the aspect of a potbellied helicopter. He, Jar Jar and the other computer-generated critters are seamlessly integrated into live action--a superb technological achievement for Lucas' team.

One suspects that Lucas was more interested in the aliens than the humans, and in the art direction than the direction of actors. The vistas of the imperial city Coruscant and the Gungan sea kingdom have a suave rapture; but some of the dialogue scenes are way too starchy, as if the actors had been left to their own resources while George minded the computerized menagerie. Neeson gives Qui-Gon a flinty dignity; Pernilla August brings heft to the small role of Anakin's mother; and Ian McDiarmid is all oily ingratiation as Senator Palpatine. Ah, Palpatine: his name could be a hill of Rome, or a palpitating volcano--one that we know will explode in later episodes as he devolves into the dark Emperor.

We know so much in this first chapter--and not because of the prerelease hype. We know that plucky Anakin will grow up to be Darth Vader, so the crepe of Fate hangs over his ascendancy. We are meant to root for the boy when he finds himself in a plane cockpit during the climactic battle (he could be a kid sneaking a drive in his dad's Lamborghini), yet we know that the budding hero will later be a super-villain, as if Aladdin were to grow up to be Jafar.

We know too--anyway, some of us do--that the original Star Wars was at times a stilted enterprise, and that, as secret alliances and bloodlines were revealed, the series matured, grew into emotional resonance. For now, The Phantom Menace is a phantom movie, the merest hint of a terrific saga that the final two episodes of the new trilogy may reveal. At least, that's what we, and Hollywood, want to believe. Hype, after all, is just moviespeak for hope.

|2