Reviews

My five year old adored Brendan Fraser in Disney's "George of the Jungle." I loved the movie too, and we saw it a total of nine times over the four months it ran at local theatres in the summer of 1998. We now own on it DVD; it was the first one we ever purchased, and its publication prompted us to buy the player for my computer, in fact.

What made "George of the Jungle" so great was that Disney remained true to character of the cartoon George and built an exciting and well-written plot around a very fine performance by one of the cutest actors to ever come out of Hollywood. My son and I would sit in the theatre and laugh ourselves silly as joke after joke had the kids and parents rolling in the aisles. George was sweet, funny, and (for the moms) very, very sexy. You could see Fraser's talent and intelligence shining through in places and the result was incredibly likeable.

Unfortunately, Fraser's Dudley is less than stupid, inconsistently clumsy, and completely lacking in any charm whatsoever. I think that Fraser's underlying intelligence actually works against his moronic character, and despite playing opposite a convincing Snidely Whiplash, Fraser's performance is frankly- horrible! I'm not sure if it's Fraser's fault, though. What can anyone do, no matter how much he dimples, to win over an audience to what has to be the most inconsistently developed and poorly written characters of all time? One moment we are asked to love Dudley for his clumsiness and purity of heart. Then we are asked to applaud Do Right's transition into a machine gun toting biker bad boy who is suddenly and inexplicably traipsing about (in an animal skin loincloth, no less) like a Solid Gold dancer. (And of the Native American musical: just how does one clog in moccasins and bare feet? Even the sound effects in the film were senseless.)

I wasn't the only one who hated the film, either. Bored with trying to read my son's Batman comic book during light scenes, I looked around sometime near the middle of the movie to find kids fidgeting in their seats and parents yawning. A few adults were close to tears with boredom and I noticed that precisely at 8:20, when there was still time to grab tickets for the next showing of "A Dog in Flanders", almost half of the audience left the theatre. I grabbed our things, but my son, excited to see Fraser again, made me stay. How I came to envy those parents with children less stubborn than my own! Only twice I heard laughter, and once I joined in. There were a total of four clever lines in the film, in the scene where Dudley is being trained to be bad by some innocuous dirty miner who simply shows up for no discernible reason.

He tells George "Now, say… I am dangerous."

Dudley replies, "You are dangerous."

The miner makes a face and says, "No, say you are dangerous."

"I already said that." says Dudley.

This is almost as clever as the repartee between Bugs and Daffy in the episodes where they vie to convince Elmer which of them he should shoot, but Warner can certainly sustain this kind of thing longer (and I don't have to shell out over twelve dollars for my son and myself to see it.) With Dudley things simply went from bad to worse and culminated into a cinematic experience that I found even more disgusting than that hitherto greatest of all celluloid stink-bombs, "Highlander 2".

You would think that such a simplistic character as a bungling Canadian Mountie could have translated fairly easily onto the big screen. What's not to understand about Dudley? He's drawn in simple lines, has predictable dialogue and only comes in three colours. Yet Disney managed to fail utterly. They even misunderstood Nell, if you can believe that this version of the irritating little blonde has a string of graduate degrees and then has trouble deciding if she should choose Snidely over Dudley. Of course, this Dudley was so lame that he did make Snidely look good, but I still think that two hours of re-runs of the cartoons would have been more entertaining than the plot-less wonder I was forced to see till its end. Not only did the movie fail to portray Do Right within any scope of reasonable resemblance, but they went on to change what the filmmakers obviously did not understand. If you make Dudley bad, or graceful, you completely lose any coherence in his character. He simply doesn't make sense any more and that's not amusing, that's punishment for parents whose children won't allow them to leave early.

In sum, although my five year old defends the film, it is this adult's perspective that "this movie sucks like a tornado, eh." I truly hated it. If Fraser doesn't get himself a new agent and do some better work, I don't know how I can take my son see another one of the travesties on film that he's been getting himself caught up in. For shame Disney, for shame, what you did to that wonderful young man (and to your audience)!

I was perfectly at home with a blue demon salesman that flapped around in the air against all principles of areodymamics, and comfortable with the hairless Chihuahua-man who walked on his hands, but I found little Anakin Skywalker, played by 8 year old Jake Lloyd, rather strange, even in the setting that he was in. Although the boy is appealing, there are critical instances where he seems odd and contrived. Anakin has the face of a six year old, is about the size of a nine year old, and often acts as if he is past thirty years of age. When young Anakin drives his pod with equanimity that marine combat pilots could envy, I chalked it up to precociousness and perhaps the effect of the "Force" within him. His tremendous courage and resilience I attributed to worldliness created by a harsh childhood of slavery. However, what struck me as unnatural about the boy was the clumsy foundation set for the love relationship Anakin will have with Queen Amidala in the next two films.

The young boy compares the Queen to an angel and he declares his feelings for her with a wide-eyed simplicity that, unfortunately, falls just short of believability. I found the scene taxing to my suspension of disbelief because boys less than ten years of age typically don't like girls the way Anakin likes Amidala. If Anakin had been just a few years older, say 13 or 14, then not only this scene, but his character would have been more plausible. As it is, he simply is too young to be doing and feeling the things Lucas wants us to accept. An older boy would have made it easier for the audience to see why Yoda said that Anakin was too old for training as well. My son did identify with Anakin, but only on a superficial level, not at all the way he dives into Luke Skywalker. For example, my four year old watched the pod racing scene with open-mouthed wonder, bouncing in his seat, obviously enthralled with seeing another young boy doing something so exciting. However, the second time he saw the film (a week later), my preschooler was already bored with this Ben-Hur inspired race, yet he has watched Luke do similar things over and over, never tiring of him.

I think that is because, even though the effects for the pod race are amazing, it is a shallow event, even for a four year old. I think a big improvement could have been made had Anakin known that he was racing for his freedom. As it is, the boy is merely racing, and it could have had more meaning for the audience had it been more personally meaningful for the character himself. His actions and his personality don't seem to be reaching the audience as much as they could due to these two shortcomings in basic writing and development. Anakin needs to be a bit older to be realistic and he needs more pathos to be more interesting. Perhaps this is why Luke works so well, yet Anakin seems to be falling a bit flat: Luke's character is infinitely more natural and convincing due being more closely matched in age to his level of maturity. It is ironic that Anakin's character and how the tone of his relationships is set seems to be the major flaw in "The Phantom Menace", because Lucas went to such lengths to make sure that he wrote, directed and produced the movie, in order to retain full artistic control. It is my opinion that a director and/or a producer would have probably made improvements here, not to the point of disrupting the artistic integrity of the story, but adding to it, rather. As with all one man shows, the creator retains control, but his flaws are there for all to see, and with Anakin, I am afraid that we see why Lucas truly does hate to write: he could be better at it.

Quality in the craftmanship of the films is, and will be, crucial, and I can only hope that the best writers and directors will be involved in the next episodes. Star Wars is not a simple space opera anymore and we need more than what we were given with "Indiana Jones." Never before has there been such an ambition of character development on the big screen as we see in the Star Wars films. Anakin is carried through six films, and his hardest development is yet to come, Obi Wan Kenobi is in four, and Yoda is in four or five. The story is not episodic, rather it has a finite structure and these characters go through many changes and developments within the plot line. Special effects simply will not make up for any defects in these characters, therefore. The characters will have to be so fully explored that it is essential that they be developed highly, or the films will become an artistic failure. This does not mean that the rest of the trilogy is doomed, however. Reportedly, Lucas will not be so overly involved in the next two films and I think it realistic to hope that they will exceed "The Phantom Menace" in quality. They will have to, or no one is going to see them, I suspect. We've grown up in the twenty three years that have passed between trilogies and frankly, Lucas's audience demands more than special effects now and hopefully others more talented will take his place and answer that challenge successfully.

I think the aspect of the film that I like second best would have to be Queen Amidala and the setting of Naboo. Her capital city is beautiful: a futuristic seaside community built of antique Byzantine architecture done in weathered shades of cream, copper, and aqua, it reminded me of those fabulous "Dinotopia" paintings that used to be so popular. There was even a hangar for the queen's spaceship (which looked too much like an SR-71 for my tastes) that was built of stone. What a nice touch that was; Disney couldn't have done it better. Natalie Portman plays the queen and is well suited to the elaborate surroundings, dressed up in gear that is often quite imaginative, and its use is integral to the story, rather than gratuitous. (Later, we find out that there is a reason for all the care Amidala takes with her appearance, other than trying to compensate for being fourteen years old and a world's only ruler.) With her glossy dark tresses, regal monotone voice, and elaborate costumes, the adolescent queen seems to be an otherworldly blend of a Japanese geisha and Elizabeth I, and I found it to be a pleasing mixture. However, at times, Amidala's costumes were at cross- purposes with her character. The slight actress looked a little unsteady under the heavy headdresses, and my biggest fault with Ms. Portman was her posture. Queens, even if they are popularly elected, lack credibility if they slouch. Some of the costumes lacked originality, also. I saw some coiffeurs that must have come straight from "Babylon 5" and at times, the young queen looked a little too much like "Beetle Juice's" Lydia, with her penchant for feather trimmed black dresses and pallid cosmetics. The worst outfit, and the most distracting, had to be the ensemble Amidala wore when she addressed the Senate. With her sad expression, and her lovely face painted white with red dots on the cheeks, the young queen wore a harlequin shaped hat that made her look like entirely too much like a French clown doll. I couldn't decide if this was done on purpose or not, but I think a more suitable choice of wardrobe could have been made.

I have to say the best thing about "The Phantom Menace" had to be the introduction of the young Obi-Wan Kenobi. I liked the older Jedi, Qui-Gon Jinn also. Qui-Gon was perfect as the thoughtful, sage Jedi Master, but it was in Obi-Wan, in the scene where he turns and reassures little Anakin that he will train him, that the goodness of the "Force" can be seen the most clearly. Ewan McGregor's face is strong, his voice rich and gentle, and he is innocent and knowing at the same time: an extraordinarily charismatic combination of traits. Due to McGregor's care with his character's demeanor, and we get the sense that with Obi-Wan, newly stepped into manhood, wonderful things are just around the corner. In other words, McGregor steps right into Sir Alec Guiness's shoes, playing the unforgettable character set by this world class actor in the first trilogy, rather than impersonating him, as I had feared might happen. Not just another pretty face, I think that McGregor's success with Obi-Wan Kenobi is due to his painstaking study of his character as well as his devotion to playing all dimensions of his role equally well. With swordplay, I think McGregor is more adept at his role than even his Scots counterpart, Duncan MacLeod, of the "Highlander" series, (played by another Brit, Adrian Paul). McGregor can handle a blade like no one else, to the point of raising movie hacking and slashing to an art form. The battle scene where the Jedi knights battle Ray Park's Darth Maul was incredibly well developed. The choreography and grace of all three actors combines for the dramatic highlight of the film. Their movements were fluid, blending strength with speed and dexterity. McGregor, as Kenobi, is astounding with his agility and fierceness, defying gravity over and over. Luke and Darth Vader's battles were never like this. I have to add that Ray Park's martial arts background adds to McGregor's performance nicely to create a truly amazing scene, made all the more meaningful as we can see what is going through the hearts and minds of the combatants as they struggle. There is a part where Qui-Gon Jinn kneels, waiting for a force field to be lifted so he can continue battling his demonic enemy. The talented Neeson gives us an expression and body language that tells the audience that Qui-Gon knows what is to happen to him when the field is lifted, and the quiet courage with which he rises and fights again makes the battle go deeper than shallow, gratuitous violence.

Star Wars' Brits rule!