pete_vh

Man, how long does it take to cross a ford?

This film, above many other disappointing cinematic book treatments, is immensely frustrating. The first time I saw this I came away thinking, "Well, at least it was better than the Rankin/Bass version of _The Hobbit_." The joke would soon be on me in that regard, but the fact remains that Bakshi's version of LOTR is, at best, a fairly uninspired rendition.

Maybe it's the fact that my attention span has been truncated by decades of MTV and video games, but I think the Rivendell ford scene drags on interminably. I can't help but wonder how much further through _The Two Towers_ we might have gotten had that little free-form jam session been cut down to less than, say, 30 minutes. That kind of crap is fine for an experimental effort like "Wizards", but not for one of the all-time greatest works of fantasy literature. Middle Earth is such a rich setting that I can't help but wonder why the animators didn't spend more time drawing, rather than subjecting us to psychedelic light shows and cheap prismatic visuals.

And lets all fess up to something: Rotoscoping is *not* animation, and Bakshi relies on it way too much (I keep thinking of the whole 'inking-tracing' exchange in "Chasing Amy"). It would be one thing if tracing over live footage freed him up to devote more energy to locations, but (with the exception of Moria) this isn't the case. Even Lothlorien was unspectacular. It might just as well have been the woods behind my house. With elves added, of course.

Bakshi's "LOTR" is a failure, albeit an ambitious one (I'm still wondering whose idea it was to portray Aragorn as Quanah Parker). His works, which had a somewhat fresh feel to them in the late 70s, have not aged well at all (check out "American Pop" some time) and his shtick is definitely better suited to edgier works like "Fritz the Cat" or "Heavy Traffic." One can't help but feel a sense of irony at the end of the film that, even though a truly faithful representation of Tolkien's trilogy would take 6 - 8 hours, you're just glad this one is over.

No one can accuse George Lucas of making a film that is anything less than visually stunning. Unfortunately, as has become the standard for action/sci-fi movies in the last decade ("Godzilla", anyone?), someone forgot to divert any FX money into actually developing a script.

The problems start with the famous introductory titles. Somehow, a galactic taxation dispute doesn't quite carry the same 'oomph' as the threat of the Death Star. And aside from a sequence where we finally get to see what all the fuss was about the Jedi, the first half of the movie drags on unbearably.

The primary culprit is the much-maligned Jar Jar Binks. Fear not, he is maligned for good reason. Obviously included as a comic respite to the painfully contrived dialogue about (once again) destiny and the Force, Jar Jar will have you wanting to put your boot through the screen after about a minute. And he does nothing (intentionally) to redeem himself throughout the movie. Unlike the loathsome Ewoks, who at least had a modicum of Muppet integrity, Jar Jar remains an annoying, unfunny, and cowardly character for the duration of the film.

The pod race is, as expected, terrific. Unfortunately this sequence comes around the halfway point of the film, and by then the damage has been done.

There are two spectacular disappointments for Episode I, not counting Jar Jar (who belongs in an aggravation category all his own, like Mark Hamill). The first is a theory on the origin of Anakin and the Jedi that will have you squirming at the "Highlander II"-like retroactive continuity it attempts to establish. Suffice to say, Lucas tries to offer a biological background to the phenomenon known as the Force. That giant sucking sound you heard May 19? It was 300,000 people in the midnight showing inhaling abruptly as they thought 'What the hell is Lucas talking about?'

Second, where is Darth Maul? One is left with the impression that a lot of his scenes were left on the cutting room floor, which is a pity because his climactic duel with Qui-Gonn Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi is the best part of this film. He is not even shown until just before the pod race scene and doesn't get a chance to do much of anything until the end. One hopes Ray Park got some kind of sweet merchandising deal in return.

With the quality of actors on screen, one can't help but blame Lucas for not giving them *anything* to work with. Liam Neeson sleepwalks through his role, Natalie Portman is asked to do little more than look regal (why are the only two main female characters in the Star Wars series royals?) and p****d off. Ewan McGregor is obviously champing at the bit throughout the film, and he doesn't get to cut loose until the last fifteen minutes. Jake Lloyd does okay, but being forced to say "Yippee!" every five minutes probably diminished his enjoyment of the role as much as it did mine. The only character with any personality is, surprise, the loathsome Jar Jar. Make of that what you will.

We finally get hint of things to come at the finish when Yoda and Mace Windu (a severely restrained Samuel L. Jackson) ponder the future of Anakin and the so-called 'Phantom Menace'. The overall tone of this part is somber and reminiscent of the mood of "The Empire Strikes Back", the best of the original trilogy, but it is far too little and way too late. "Episode I" will be eaten up by kids 12 and under, and it will probably break the opening weekend gross record, but even for a movie that had no chance of living up to it's own hype it is a staggering disappointment. I rate it as number 3 in the series. Just barely ahead of "Return of the Jedi" and nowhere near the quality of the Episodes IV and V.

I write this with the full realization that Lucas was intending to make a kids' movie, so my expectations were not that great going in. What surprised me was how close "The Phantom Menace" came to failing to meet even those.

Many people like to point to this TV movie when arguing with the vast legions of Hanks-philes out there that Tom did in fact make crappy films (I think "Bachelor Party" was great, but that's another story). The movie focuses on a "Dungeons and Dragons-style game" that eventually drives our young Gump to hallucinatory madness. The story is charmingly early 1980s, focusing as it does on the imminent threat to our youth posed by those evil role-playing games.

I, however, prefer to view "Mazes and Monsters" as the turning point in the "Whatever Happened to Chris Makepeace?" story. we all remember him as 'Rudy the Rabbit' in "Meatballs" and as the hapless Clifford in "My Bodyguard", where he gave us all a vicarious thrill by beating the crap out of Matt Dillon. Few could argue (especially those of us who read "Dynamite!" on a regular basis) that great things were in store for him.

And then came Rona Jaffe. The line between bad acting and bad writing is razor thin, so I leave it to you to decide whose fault Makepeace's performance in this is. All I know is that the last major release I saw him in was "Vamp", and that was 1986. He had a small role as Sean Penn's brother in "Falcon and the Snowman", but by that time the Brat Pack torch had been passed to others with straighter hair and flashier resumes.

I can't in good conscience recommend this movie. Watch it if only to see a younger, more idealistic Chris Makepeace, before Rona Jaffe feasted on his soul.

Seeing John Grisham in the credits for this one set off the usual Poorly-Written Crap alarm bells, but I soldiered on nonetheless. My mistake. The plot, when not laughable, makes you wonder how long Grisham can continue to write this sort of garbage without getting stoned by the reading public. No character seems to have any motivation for their irrational behavior, nor do any of them present us with a reason to sympathize. Branagh is obviously here solely to make money to pay Emma's alimony. And while he may have been able to pull off a decent neutral American accent in "Dead Again", his attempt at a Georgia drawl here is painful. More lowlights: a set-up Helen Keller could see coming, Robert Duvall leading an army of Abe Simpsons, Embeth Davidtz making you wonder if "Army of Darkness" really was her finest hour, and if that wasn't enough, Robert Downey Jr. as the Burned Out Investigator. It is entirely possible that the second half of this movie is one of the finest achievements in American cinema, redeeming all that came before, but I wouldn't know. I put in "Henry V" instead.