Laddy Boy

Its terrible plot amounts to little more than multiple video game fetch quests strung together with a weak rehash of ROTJ's ending stuck at its end. It essentially undermines Vader's sacrifice at the end of ROTJ as well as the accomplishments of the heroes in that film. It plays out like bad fan-fic. It reeks of creative bankruptcy to bring back Palpatine, and it even manages to make him boring and generic. It's better to consider ROTJ the real end of Lucas's sage and ignore this one altogether.

A compelling rapport between Kylo and Rey. Hamill gives a good performance, but his character doesn't feel like a realistic continuation of his character from the original trilogy. His story ends in an epic fashion, though. The other 2 story lines -- the trip to the gambling planet and the slow speed space chase aren't very engaging. Some lame attempts at humor. It's mixed bad.

I found it pretty boring. It seems like a generic heist flick. The actor doesn't have Ford's charisma, and his romance with Kira is flat. Lando is a highlight. It does have a clever double cross twist at the end.

It's a decent film clearly aimed a new generation of younglings. On that account, I'd give it 3 1/2 stars. Portman gives a flat performance, and Jar Jar's annoying -- though little kids probably like him. Neeson is engaging as always as Qui-Gon. The pod race is cool and visually impressive. The duel at the end was great. Sad that sweet little Anakin will go through such a hard life. Btw, virtually all the ships in the film -- large and small -- are models, not CGI.

A lame retread of the original Star Wars with weaker character development and less exciting action pieces despite the improvement in special effects technology