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Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace

  • Film
Phantom Menace_Darth Maul2.jpg
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Time Out says

If Lucas's brief '70s directorial career saw him regress further into immaturity at each step, it's hardly surprising that after a 22-year gestation his return to the fray should prove both so inanely childish and so thoroughly unskilled, however saturated with state-of-the-art special effects. What you don't expect is just how dramatically drab and impenetrable it proves: right from the opening title scroll, the film grinds its way from nonsensical plot exposition to anti-climactic finale through vast stretches of intergalactic tedium. The space-set pastichess of old-time childhood favourites - war films, underwater adventures, swashbucklers, Harryhausen-modelled Greek myths (McGregor's performance is straight out of a Gerry Anderson cartoon) - are familiar from the earlier films (as is the spiritual mumbo-jumbo), but the absolute dearth of human reference in Lucas's entirely imaginary universe must be almost unprecedented. With much of the action and most of the intrigue taking place off-screen (where are the baddies?), the menace's phantom nature at least seems clear: this is just a crude curtain-raiser of Episode II. Charmless, sexless, passionless and robot-humoured, it's preposterously uninvolving.
Written by NB

Release Details

  • Release date:Friday 10 February 2012
  • Duration:132 mins

Cast and crew

  • Director:George Lucas
  • Screenwriter:George Lucas
  • Cast:
    • Natalie Portman
    • Liam Neeson
    • Brian Blessed
    • Ahmed Best
    • Pernilla August
    • Hugh Quarshie
    • Franz Oz
    • Ian McDiarmid
    • Terence Stamp
    • Celia Imrie
    • Anthony Daniels
    • Samuel L Jackson
    • Jake Lloyd
    • Ewan McGregor
    • Kenny Baker
    • Oliver Ford Davies
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