And finally, I got to see that new Star Wars movie! {ATOC Spoilers}

Cafe Society
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Yep, only now, nearly two months after it’s release, did I finally get out to see it.

What, have I been living under a rock or something you ask?

Nah, just living in South Korea – a very cool place to live, hardly “under a rock”!

Oh, it was so cool!!! Worth having to wait an extra two months. Man, Yoda, sure kicks ass! So does Count Drac… I mean, Dooku.

But, as is the case with most straight males methinks, my favourite character is Padme. Here’s hoping she continues using only the tightest-fitting clothes from her wardrobe.

Man, I wish Jar Jar hadn’t been there, or that he had at least taken some speech lessons!

Yeah, anyway, just thought I’d express my extreme satisfaction with this flick, even if it sounds a little late on the draw to all you lucky bums back in North America.

BTW, watching in a theare full of Koreans was itself a strange experience – I was the only one who made even the slightest noise. I went “Aha!” when the Death Star plans were shown, and I could feel the strange looks when I laughed at the obligatory “I have a bad feeling about this!” line. Thankfully, the Korean subtitles did not detract from the experience – they’re actually at the side of the screen, rather than under. (Would that make them side titles then?)

So, to wrap up this review / rambling, I give this movie **** out of *****!

PS - If someone could tell me why I had two wait 2 months longer to see it, I’d like that. I am a little P.O.'ed, mostly because I’ve had to avoid many of my favorite websites for fear of being spoiled.

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I can see the appeal, but really, I wish that they hadn’t gone exclusively for the sledgehammer approach with her wardrobe. I mean, think of her daughter (that sounds sick, for some reason): In what three scenes was Leia the hottest? OK, I’ll grant that one of them was the gold bikini (sometimes the sledgehammer works), but then you’ve also got her lying in the Death Star cell, and her in full regalia handing out medals. No cleavage, no midriff, hardly even legs, but HOT. Leia vs. Padme isn’t even a comparison, if you ask me.

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Padme blows Leia away.

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Hmmm, Natalie Portman and the 1980 Carrie Fisher in an oiled catfight…

Excuse me for a minute…

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Leia had more style and presence, and certainly more pizazz than Padme has exhibited so far. I’ll admit that physically speaking Padme is the hotter of the two, but a little bit of colour and facial expression in a character can go a long way (Leia wins, hands down). This film was not exactly the crown jewel in the Star Wars stable if you ask me; I would give it no more than 2.5 asterisks out of 5. That’s because it could have been much, much better with only minimal changes to the script.

The 45 tedious minutes of Padme and Mannequin looking mournfully into each other’s eyes and sighing wistfully just about killed the experience for me–looks like the Gwyneth Paltrow School of Serious Acting is enjoying considerable influence these days. I enjoyed the various remarkable visuals enormously, particularly the scenes in the dizzy metropolis, and I thought the special effects were outstanding–too bad about the slightly fuzzy picture quality (although I thought it was not as bad as some have reported).

Some good and energetic fight scenes, which is always nice in a Star Wars film, but nothing else really memorable: there’s nothing like a Han Solo or Leia in this trilogy, and without such colour of character the film can be even better-looking than this one and still not make a deep impression.

I was very happy to see a little bit of humour sneak in after the Padme-Mannequin drudgery, specifically the High Noon showdown between Yoda and Doku. The humourous shot where Yoda’s hand hovers slowly to pull his robe open and reach for his light sabre is my favourite in the whole movie, but it is perhaps a little bit too overt an allusion. It does not invite us to take things very seriously, which could have been a mistake seeing as how the scene is followed by a little green toad waving a miniature light sabre and whacking a 2-metre vampiric killer around–difficult material to take seriously to begin with. However the scene does work in my opinion, if only because of the fact that this is Yoda for crying out loud: the little guy can do no wrong.

From a filmic point of view this was a significant improvement on the first episode, which was pretty bad; the third episode could be something memorable if Lucas improves his next product the way he improved from Episode One to Two. There’s characters with potential around, now if only we could see a bit less of the puerile and inert love scenes and more story and character development…