bohemiancoast

In one of those weird things that happens, a (not-actually-fannish, though buggered if you can tell) friend of mine said "oh, I'm a mad Star Wars fan, and we're going to it on Thursday, do you want to come along?" And I said oh, hard life, housework, kids, cons, -2CDCS, you know... and Steven said "You deserve a night off". So I'm going to see it tonight.

However, I hadn't seen Episode 1, so I borrowed her video to watch. There was one point, about 20 minutes in, when I became actively despondent at how dull it was, but it picked up a lot after that. I despised Jar Jar Binks, who completely fails to function as the Chewbacca substitute he was clearly intended to be. I think the film suffers from a belief that it is no longer acceptable to put actors in alien suits; the advantage of actors is that they *act*.

I also thought that the way in which the droids were controlled forms one of the most perfect Idiot Plots I have ever seen in my entire life. (An idiot plot is one that can only work if you assume that one or more of the characters are complete idiots.)

I had seen reviews criticising the acting of the boy who plays Anakin, but I thought he was pretty sound on the whole; he had most of the best scenes. Natalie Portman was wet, though. Their scenes also had a particular problem; if the sexes had been reversed, so that an adult man was sweet-talking a nine-year-old girl, prior to a romance ten years later, it would have appeared completely vile.