Episode I: The Menace of Jake Lloyd

I was taught to never beat a dead horse. Why? I mean, what’s the harm really? The thing is already dead, right? Maybe dead horse beating is a decent way to blow off steam. It’s certainly a lot safer than trying to beat the animate and bucking variety.

Anyway, all of this is prelude to another of my endless rants about the deadest horse to ever clomp on my expectations and leave only a steaming pile of stanky shit. Of course, I’m referring to the video release of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace.

I’m a relatively forgiving sort. I try not to hold grudges, and I was more than willing to give this flick a second chance (not including the 2nd and 3rd chances I’d already allotted during its eternal theatrical run). Here, in the safety of my own home, with a decent (if not suberb) surround-sound system and the appropriate wide-screen format, I hoped to vanquish all criticism and simply get swept up in the pure joy of watching a new Star Wars movie—the first of its kind in over 16 years. Unfortunately, this new hope did not strike back.

This movie really sucks. Not just in comparison to the giants that preceded it. No. All by itself, this movie sucks. If there never were any Star Wars, Empire, or Jedi, in fact, this might be one of the dumbest, most poorly acted, horribly written, and just plain shitty movies of the year.

Now, I absolutely loved the technical and design elements to this film. The sound was as pristine and thundering and as perfect as a sound mix could be. This movie is almost as good to listen to as to watch. Which isn’t to say it isn’t beautiful to behold since ILM artists have put together some of the most detailed and inspired vistas ever set to digital canvas and projected on a screen. And they’ve established a new standard when it comes to fully integrating CG characters and elements into live action. Spaceships that don’t exist are completely realized and solidly present in scenes. And characters like Jar Jar Binks fully inhabit every scene in which they appear, interacting and playing off of flesh and blood costars. Of course…

Of course, the fact that this particular character exists at all is less a superior technical achievement than a suicidal gesture from the film’s writer, director and main inspiration. Jar Jar doesn’t belong as a walk-on for after-school TV animated tripe like “Thunder Cats” much less the Star Wars Universe. Every comedic misstep, every grating vocalization, every ear flop and bug-eyed double-take plays like a chorus of Rosanne Barr singing the national anthem accompanied by Phyllis Diller on the stainless steel fork & chalkboard.

And even if you somehow excised Binks from the movie (and substituted something less caustic, like a CG fig tree perhaps) you wouldn’t solve the film’s biggest problem: young Jake Lloyd.

How long did it take to search the known universe to cast this role, and this the best they came up with? Was Haley Joel Osmont busy studying The Bard when Lucas called or did he actually choose a questionable Bruce Willis flick over the most anticipated movie in Hollywood history? Obviously, either Lucas’ casting people didn’t look hard enough or even the second coming of the younger Culkin kid couldn’t have saved the sappy, inane-bordering on retarded dialogue Lucas had written.

“Yipeee!!” This is young Anakin’s reaction to being told he can finish one last slave task before going home for the day. “Yipeee!!” This is young Anakin’s reaction to being told that he can join Qui Gon and Obi Wan to begin his Jedi training. Is it Lloyd’s fault he was directed to deliver this moronic exclamation? I say no, but refuse to absolve him from blame for delivering it with such gosh-darn boyish glee. What a sissy. Makes me want to hunt down and destroy the Jedi myself just for introducing him to me.

Jake Lloyd’s litany of poor line readings are always timed for the weakest effect at the most crucial moments. We can assume he’s asked to display anger or some form of displeasure at times such as when he snappily corrects Padme that he’s “…not a slave, I’m a person and my name is Anakin!” As opposed to planting the first seeds of doubt as to this wunderkind’s potentially evil nature, we are left puzzling at the amateurish mopey-face that Lloyd employs as the piercing squeal of his clueless voice diverts our attention toward his particularly irksome mop-headed vacuity. His feigned attempt at indignation when Yoda won’t let him play with the big Jedis or the quasi-chemistry supposedly generated between him and the Queen are equally inept and distracting. It’s as though we are watching a child’s failed final assignment in acting pre-school rather than a developed character behaving in a film. Blame Lucas. But don’t blame me if this kid ever works again. I told you so.

There’s another great scene that Lloyd doesn’t even ruin by himself. It’s the one where he’s working on his pod-racer (not a bad set of engines for a slave, eh?) and his little Fraggle Rock-esque friends come by to tease him. You know, the scene with the midget-sized Greedo. Amazingly, this film cost hundreds of millions of dollars to make, and somehow, here’s a scene that plays exactly like one from my third grade play about the Declaration of Independence. Each kid reads his line, in the order they’re standing, and sets up the next kid as though they are passing a microphone hand-to-hand. At least two of these kids must be related to Lucasfilm executives since they are too young to have bought or slept their way into the movie.

Bad acting can’t account for every problem. As I’ve stated, bad writing is equally culpable, if not the ultimate culprit. Even Samuel Jackson is forced to make quizzically opaque and ponderous statements like “This could be the clue we need to unravel the mystery of the Sith.” Huh? What mystery? In fact, what clue? This statement comes at a time in a scene after Anakin is refused Jedi training, and Mace Windu shifts gears abruptly toward the Naboo situation. He offers another strange take when Qui Gon first requests that the council grant an audience for the boy. After some pointless resistance to the concept, he shrugs it off and acquiesces to see the boy. The way it is spoken, and through Jackson’s body language it’s as if he is being asked to wash Anakin’s pod racer with a tooth brush rather than interview a potential “chosen one.” In the context of these scenes, and in the context of the whole movie, these lines just don’t make sense. They don’t add anything, and wind up making Jackson’s Mace look like a heavy-handed idiot.

Same thing with Liam Neeson. He actually has to field this question, that comes out of nowhere, sounds like it was read off of a cue card by a dyslexic, and feels more tacked on than wood paneling in suburbia: Young, moronic Anakin says, “Qui-Gon? I heard Yoda talking about midi-chlorines. What exactly are midi-chlorines?” And poor Liam Neeson needs to explain this psuedo-scientific gobbledy-gook with a straight face and Mr. Wizardesque delivery. What Grade-A Crappola.

A few random questions:

Why is everyone always “too old to begin the training” of a Jedi? Do they normally train fetuses?

How come the Jedi weren’t allowed to speak up at the Senate hearing about the Federation invasion of Naboo? The Federation representatives denied there was an invasion, and demanded evidence. Shouldn’t the two Jedi Knights that almost got run over by Federation invasion vehicles have thought about attending this pow-wow to provide their eye-witness account? Aren’t they trusted for their words to be taken at face value? Or is the Federation asking for another, more corrupt task force to investigate and report back to the Senate? And how the fuck long would this take anyway? Don’t these people travel at light speed? That ain’t fast enough? It’s all just a poorly conceived writer’s excuse to have Queen Amidala unwittingly side with Palpatine against the current Chancellor.

How can the Force be both self-deterministic (“Remember, Anakin, your focus determines your reality”) and fatalistic (all talk of “destiny” and being “mindful of the future”)? Can’t really be in charge of your own destiny and at the mercy of fate, can you?

Anyway, I could go on forever about what is wrong with this movie (I think I already have). Don’t even get me started on the whole Anakin built C-3PO on Tattoine, but Threepio has no memory of the planet and Vader doesn’t display any recognition of him in any of the other 3 movies. Ugh.

Suffice it to say, my expectations for Episode 2 couldn’t be lower. That’s one horse I ain’t betting on.