Amusing review of Sith on Amazon

mewso · 06-06-2005 3:00am #1

Was looking at some reader reviews on amazon and laughed out loud at this. Thought it was excellent:-

Lucas does it again... unfortunately, June 5, 2005
Reviewer: Stephen R. Balzac (Stow, MA USA)

Seeing Revenge of the Sith is like going to a Hong Kong action flick: you don't go for the plot or the dialogue or the characterization; rather, you go for the martial arts. Sith is just like that, only without the martial arts.

The acting and dialogue in the movie continue to hold to the same high standards set in the two previous movies. In other words, they make Plan 9 From Outer Space look good. The only redeeming feature is that Jar-Jar doesn't get any lines.

Yoda (played by Fozzie Bear) is, once again, the only well done character in the whole movie. The battle between Yoda and Palpatine at least comes close to the action standards set by Kermit the Frog and Long John Silver in Muppet Treasure Island.

We learn in Sith that although Jedi can sense fine gradations of emotion (e.g. fear), they can't sense strong emotions like the fact that the people around them are about the shoot them in the back. I can only conclude that betrayal just isn't subtle enough to be sensed through the Force. Nor, apparently, could Anakin sense that Padme was telling him the truth when she showed up on Mustafar.

The only thing that makes any shred of sense is that the clone warriors can't succeed in killing Obi-Wan. Once again, they miss him. This is not suprising as we know from the last movie that the template for the clones was Jenga Fett. Jenga Fett couldn't manage to hit Obi-Wan with weapons ranging from a hand blaster to a star fighter blast cannon. In at least one small way, Lucas managed to live up to the Chekovian ideal that if you want to use a gun in act three, you must put it on the wall in act one.

As far as Anakin's switch to the Dark Side, for all the emotion he showed, he might have been ordering chocolate ice-cream instead of vanilla. Perhaps that's the true difference between the light side and dark sides of the Force?

Finally, the dramatic battle between Obi-Wan and Darth/Anakin ended up feeling like something out of the Naked Gun: villain falls off the ledge, gets run over by a steamroller, walked across by the marching band, etc. That's not quite what happened to Anakin (there was no steamroller), but otherwise there wasn't much difference.

All in all, a great way to cure insomnia (my wife kept dozing off throughout the flick).

Ultimately, Sith is a tragedy. Unfortunately, I don't think it's in quite the way that George Lucas intended.

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R0ot · 06-06-2005 3:06am

WTF! Episode 3 was class, i don't know what that person was doing in the cinema but he wasn't watching the film! :mad:

ixoy · 06-06-2005 3:16am

Great review

A little harsh, but anyone who claims the film had top-notch acting and a smart script is quite clearly delusional. I enjoyed it for what it was but love those scathing reviews!