I can remember watching a Channel 4 documentary a few years back about new age soldiers who would stare at goats and hang weights from their genitals. The staring was supposed to kill the subject they were staring at but I’m not sure what the weights did. Regardless, the documentary was very amusing and had a complete ‘what the fuck?’ aspect to it. It was hard to fathom that the military would allow a bunch of hippie soldiers to do all of these wacky things.

However, I quickly forgot about the program and it was consigned to the deepest, darkest recesses of my mind. But then one day I saw a trailer for a new film called The Men Who Stare at Goats. Suddenly it all came flooding back: the Jedi-hippie-samurai-warrior monks who spend their time taking acid and hanging weights from their genitals. I had to see the movie.

It would be kind of hard to fuck up a movie like this. The subject matter is just so silly. And to be fair, the filmmakers do a decent job. The film is well acted and very funny. But at the same time it’s nothing more than a fluff piece. There’s a tiny bit of commentary on Iraq and how corporations are carving it up instead of nations, but most of the film is gag driven. Which is fair enough – the film is very funny – but you aren’t really given the bigger picture. I wanted to know more about the climate of fear during the Cold War that allowed this very peculiar brand of craziness to flourish.

In general it’s the flashback sequences that I found the funniest. There’s a hilarious bit where George Clooney’s character joins the New Earth Army. He’s told to dance. At first he’s kind of stiff but then he loosens up, gets a goofy look on his face and begins to go crazy. It’s just fun to see Clooney let his hair down and it’s obvious that he’s having a great time.

This scene has another moment that had me cracking up. There’s a flashback to Clooney’s character as a child. We see why he’s so reluctant to dance. You see, the kid loves to dance to pop music but his father doesn’t approve. In fact, in the scene, the father, upon seeing his son dancing in a very feminine fashion, throws something at him and tells him to stop acting like a ‘queer’. It’s a very harsh moment, and it didn’t actually get many laughs in the theatre, but I was cracking up. The kid, the music and the timing are all perfect.

I was also highly amused by some of the horrific experiments that the army got up to. There’s a bit where the military want to know if a cat can telepathically tell whether its kitten is in danger. So we see a scientist about to stub out a cigarette on a kitten’s face. It’s horrific to think about, but the pathetic meow that the cat makes and the absurdity of the experiment make it blackly funny.

There’s a Dr Strangelove element to all of this. We find out that some of the experiments into telepathy and psychic phenomena are inspired by gossip, rumour mongering and hoaxes. The Soviets and the Americans both get into this nonsense because they fear that the other side will have some success with it.

Sadly most of this information is dwelt on for just for a few moments. The vast majority of the film focuses on the relationship between a reporter, played by Ewan McGregor, and an aging soldier, played by George Clooney. Yes their journey is consistently amusing, but it can’t disguise a rather moribund story.

It takes a while to learn why Clooney’s character wants to go to Iraq, and when we do find out, it lands with a dull thud. The wraparound story and the finale are the least interesting things in the film.

One of the film’s biggest selling points is its cast, and most of them do an excellent job. George Clooney, in particular, is excellent. As is Jeff Bridges, who basically reprises the role of The Dude. Ewan McGregor, on the other hand, lets himself down with his American accent. As my wife pointed out, it just sounds like a monotonous drone, which is a shame, as McGregor’s comic timing is excellent – he and Clooney work well together.

A bit of a head scratcher, though, is Kevin Spacey. Yes the man is funny but he seems to be making a career out of bit parts. I’m not saying that the role is beneath him, but it’s disappointing that he seems to be choosing ‘easy’ roles. It seems his film career is a brief holiday from his theatre duties at the Old Vic. He isn’t taking many risks.

Despite this, Spacey still contributes a couple of the film’s funniest moments. One scene in particular that I liked was when he makes a soldier take LSD and then bombards him with flashing lights until he goes mad. I also liked it when Spacey himself unknowingly takes LSD and contemplates blowing his brains out. He thinks about it for a second and then suddenly announces that he’s hungry. It’s both enjoyable and a letdown to see Spacey in these roles – he’s a funny guy but with films like Superman Returns and 21 he’s been punching under his weight for the last few years.

And that’s what the film does. It punches under its weight. With a bit more context it could have been a memorable satire. As it is, it’s just a funny, silly, forgettable movie. It’ll probably stay with me as long as the Channel 4 documentary that I watched all those years back.

There’s a large segment of Star Wars fans that try and delude themselves into thinking that Revenge of the Sith is actually a pretty good film. They try and say that while it isn’t as good as A New Hope or The Empire Strikes Back, it’s certainly better than Return of the Jedi. My friends, these people are fucking morons. Revenge of the Sith is the worst Star Wars film of all. Lucas has taken his cinematic legacy, and after raping it hard, has shat in its mouth.

There are many low points in the film but the nadir is the Vader transformation. It's the bit that everyone has been waiting to see. It's the bit that is supposed to make the trilogy worthwhile. So imagine my disgust when Vader lumbers from the operating table like a constipated Frankenstein and cries "Nooooooooooooo!" in Seymour Skinner style when he hears that his wife has died. Pathetic. Now, when I watch the original trilogy, I'm only going to see a melodramatic drama queen under that tin can helmet.

But I still don't even know why Anakin turned to the dark side. The plot just doesn’t make any sense. Anakin had some bad dreams, got worried about his wife and then turned to the dark side to protect her? Eh? What? It's absolute rubbish. And it's amazing how stupid Anakin is. Palpatine tells him a story about a "person he knew" and how this "person" had known a powerful Sith Lord. This "person" then learnt many things from this Sith Lord, including how to extend life. However, this "person" then killed this Sith Lord in his sleep. Hmm. I wonder who this person was? Gosh, it's a puzzle...

But because of one or two bad dreams, Anakin decides to trust this slimy scumbag on the off chance that his dream will come true. Of course, the dream only comes true when Anakin attacks his wife. Oh, so it was a self-fulfilling prophecy? Oh, aren't you clever, George? Let me bow down before your writing genius.

But I just hate the idea of Vader being so stupid. What it amounts to is that he was tricked into becoming a bad guy. He had a few worries, some bloke came along and used them to his advantage, and there you go, he's evil. It's terrible. When the trilogy started I was looking forward to a nuanced story. I wanted it to have, you know, some depth. I wanted Vader to be truly troubled. What I didn't want was a pouting idiot with an inferiority complex. Unfortunately, that's what I got. I got a girly man who tapped some pussy and who then drove himself mental because he was a little bit worried about her.

However, the other bad guys are useless too, especially General Grievous. With a name like that you'd imagine a hard-as-nails villain. Instead you get a spluttering moron whose party-trick is to take four lightsabers and twirl them before attacking windmill style. It's the equivalent of me getting into fight, twirling my arms, and running forward at full speed. Needless to say General Grievous loses a scrap to a man with three less lightsabers.

In fact, that villain, and everything else in the film, makes me wonder what the motivation for it was. I can just picture some animator or Lucas saying, "Wouldn't it be cool if..." or "Wouldn't it be neat if..." But of course, it's not neat and it's not cool. Just because you can do something doesn't mean that you should. I'm actually really pleased that Lucas made the original films when he did. It meant that he couldn't indulge every whim and that he had to focus on trivial matters such as story. After all, the originals have cracking stories. They may not be high art, and they may have hokey bits of dialogue, but at least they make sense. The new films on the other hand make no sense whatsoever. The plots are needlessly complicated, and not complicated in a good way. After all, I think that I'm a reasonably smart guy. I can make my way through a dense story. But this story is only dense in the sense that it's incredibly stupid. All the talking seems to be an excuse to move to another bland piece of action. It doesn't matter that the plot is impenetrably fuzzy.

And while on the subject of the film’s CGI wankery, what the fuck is up with the Fern Gully lizard thing that Obi Wan rides? It looks ridiculous and it takes part in one of the worst chases I’ve ever seen. There’s a bit in the film where the lizard, which yelps every five seconds like someone is cramming a lightsaber up its arse, chases General Grievous on a pathetic farty mono wheel – it sounds like its running on methane. It’s embarrassingly bad and makes those who try and defend this wretched piece of shit look like the fucktards that they are.

Another piece of shockingly bad cinema is the fight between Palpatine and Mace Windu. This is supposed to be the grand revelation of The Emperor. We’re finally meant to get the first full glimpse of the true evil in the series. But how can The Emperor be scary when he’s so damn hammy? He chews the scenery like a madman and sounds more like a petulant child than an evil genius. I mean, screaming ‘Unlimited powar!’ is the sort of thing that an eight year-old would shout while electrocuting someone. Ooh, look, I can shoot lightning bolts out of my fingertips! Isn’t that neat?!? Unlimited powar!!!

But it’s not a surprise that Anakin falls for this fool. He too has the mental agility of a child. In one of the first scenes he kills someone in cold blood by beheading them. He then says to himself that he shouldn’t have done it. It isn’t the Jedi way. But he only seems vaguely puzzled. It only seems like a minor mistake, like he’s ordered the shrimp instead of the crab.

But who gives a fuck about the Jedi code anyway? The Jedi are all a bunch of wankers. The whole code basically revolves around not having any feelings and sitting there while talking out of your arse to a conehead. No wonder Anakin decides to leave. At least when he leaves he gets to kill younglings and shit.

Oh, and by the way, Palpatine’s seduction of Anakin is hilarious. He takes him to this weird show with glowing lights. Is this the Galactic equivalent of a porno? It has this weird, seedy vibe to it, and all through the scene you’re expecting Palpatine to ask this hot stud to reach into his pants and give him a happy ending.

But what all of this leads up to is the fight between Obi Wan and Anakin – the clash between good and evil. And this is the thing that I’d been waiting to see. But the fight is a bitter disappointment. For once I was hoping that Lucas could leave all of his gimmicky bullshit to the side and have a wonderfully simple contest. But no, instead of replicating the amazing fights at the end of Return of the Jedi and The Phantom Menace, we have nonsense where Obi Wan and Anakin fall off towers and fly over lava flows on little robots. It has no drama. And there’s even one bone-headed moment when Anakin and Obi Wan stand there endlessly twirling their lightsabers at one another. It’s a big head scratcher. What are they supposed to be doing? Drying each other’s sweat-drenched brows?

And the dialogue is mind-blowingly awful. ‘You underestimate my power,’ says Anakin with all the venom of someone who’s been sitting on their couch eating hash cake all day. And then when he finally gets sliced and diced by his mentor, he yells, ‘I hate you!’ Yes, Vader is basically an emo.

But even worse dialogue comes from a robo-doctor that operates on the dying Padme. ‘She has lost the will to live.’ That’s your strict medical diagnosis? But for someone who has lost the will to live, Padme seems incredibly focused. She names her children in about ten seconds. Not bad going for some bint that wants to thrown in the towel.

And while some people have praised the film for tying the two trilogies together, it only left me with questions. Is it really going to take 20 years or so to build the Death Star? Are R2-D2 and C-3PO really going to be on that rebel ship for a couple of decades? And how come Obi Wan is going to age so terribly? He’s going to go from a youthful Ewan McGregor and turn into a decrepit Alec Guinness. The Force may be strong with him but a few years without lightsaber battles and conehead Jedis to talk to is going to seriously speed up the aging process.

After the mess that was The Phantom Menace, you’d be hard pressed to make a worse Star Wars film. But somehow George Lucas reached into his mangy beard and produced an even stinkier piece of shit. This film doesn’t even have the benefit of a couple of really good set pieces to make it somewhat watchable. You just have mind-numbingly tedious action followed by risible dialogue scenes. It’s a chore to sit through.

Of course, one of the worst things is the romance between Anakin and Padme. They loll about in fields and have picnics and look at waterfalls. It’s like they’re ten or something. It’s so sexless, it’s laughable.

And then there’s the dialogue. The quote that springs to mind is this gem that Anakin says: ‘I don’t like sand. It’s coarse, and rough, and irritating and it gets everywhere. Not like here. Here everything’s soft and smooth.’ And then he touches Padme. Dear Lord, I know people try and make excuses. They try and say that Star Wars isn’t Shakespeare. Fair enough, it isn’t. But at least when Lawrence Kasdan was writing the scripts, you didn’t want to shower the screen with laughter-propelled vomit.

And oh how it hurts to have one of the coolest characters in cinema – Darth Vader – be a flaccid, pouting teenager. Really, this is what drove Vader into insanity? He missed his mummy? Because that’s really what starts everything off. He misses his mum, then feels that she’s in pain and tries to rescue her.

However, when Anakin finally finds his mummy, she’s been tied up by some Sandpeople. It’s not quite clear whether they’ve been boning her as well as beating her, but she’s clearly in bad shape. And therefore Anakin must wreak a terrible vengeance by slaughtering them. Okay, so having some lanky aliens enslave you mum is pretty bad. I can accept that. If my mother was taken by hostile aliens, I’d be upset, too. But why does Anakin have to be such a girl about it? When he tells Padme, he begins pouting and crying. He’s like a teen having a hissy fit. We want Vader to be a badass. We don’t want him to be a character off Dawson’s Creek.

And Padme defies belief as well. She forgives Anakin in a second after he tells her that he slaughtered all the Sandpeople – children and women as well as men. I don’t know about you, but if my other half suddenly confessed to genocide, I might have to rethink our relationship. You know, that’s kind of fundamental. No cheating, no stealing and no genocide.

But Anakin tries to excuse himself by saying they’re animals and that he slaughtered them like animals. [pout] So maybe Padme forgives him because she’s a racist cow and she thinks that senseless killing is fine if the aliens don’t have beautiful white skin. In which case, fuck the pair of them!

One of the film’s biggest selling points when it came out was that Jango Fett was going to be in it – the father of Boba Fett (every geek’s favourite secondary Star Wars character). But why the fuck is Dr Ropata from crappy Kiwi soap Shortland Street playing him? Never has the quote “You’re not in Guatemala now, Dr Ropata” been more accurate. (Shortland Street joke that 0.0001% of the population will get? High five!)

But yes, we have Jango Fett and he’s a colossal disappointment. The biggest reason that he sucks is his voice. The Kiwi accent just isn’t threatening. It brings to mind large, roaming fields and men having sex with sheep behind barns. I mean, compare his voice to the voice of Boba Fett in the original trilogy (before George fucked with them). The original Boba sounded hard as nails. He sounded cool. Now he sounds like a farmer.

And do I really want to see Boba as a child? No. But again George has to be all weird and paedo-like and have Jango Fett and his son Boba hang around together without a woman in sight. Therefore there are lots of scenes with the annoying child encouraging his father to kick Jedi ass.

I also hate the idea of a clone army. You see, even though you hear about the Clone Wars in the original trilogy, you’re never told what it entails. You’re never told it entails silly-looking, lanky aliens cloning millions of Dr Ropatas to go to war. Seriously, that’s…shit.

And why do all the Dr Ropata stormtroopers have to be CGI? Okay, when you’re doing a massive wide shot with millions of men, you need CGI. But when it’s a close-up, why do you have to ruin everything with obvious computer effects? Are suits and extras really that expensive?

But the stormtroopers aren’t the only things that are completely CGI. After the horrific muppet in The Phantom Menace, we now have a CGI Yoda. And he looks, well…like a CGI Yoda. He never looks remotely tangible. He never looks like you could reach out and touch him and fondle him. He’s just a pixelated version of Yoda who exists purely in that form so that he can have a fight at the end.

And how piss poor is the fight at the end of the film? We have Yoda, a little green blob, versus old man Christopher Lee. It’s as bad as it sounds. You have an old age pensioner fighting an annoying green blur that bounces across the screen like a midget on meth. It can’t compare to the fight at the end of The Phantom Menace.

But worse than this is the Jedi fight at the Coliseum. Not only do we have to see lots of crappy alien Jedi fighting robots and flying insects, but we have to endure the attempts at ‘humour’. You see, in a hil-arious mix-up, C-3PO’s head gets fused onto a battle droid. Therefore he goes around helplessly watching himself kill Jedi while uttering moronic lines like, ‘I’m programmed for etiquette, not destruction’. I almost started sobbing. This is supposed to be funny?

And while I’m on the subject of droids, how come R2-D2 can fly now? He never did that in the original trilogy – he was just a tin can on wheels. Now he can do all kinds of fancy shit. Yet more proof of the way that CGI cripples the imagination.

But is there anything decent in the film? Well, the action scene with the flying cars was okay, I guess. But all that did was make me wish that I was watching Blade Runner.

From the director of Bridget Jones’ Diary comes a film about terrorism. If you think that sounds like a recipe for cinematic gold then you must be demented.

As you’d expect from someone who made such a wretched piece of fluff, the emotions here are laid on rather thick. This isn’t a film that knows a whole lot about subtlety. They might as well have just issued a box of hankies at the door.

The film begins with an exceedingly cute child having fun with his mummy. He’s so damn cute and so damn loveable that you know he’s not going to make it through the film alive. And then when you realise that the film is called Incendiary, you know he’s going to get blown into a million little pieces.

Now having your son die in a terrorist attack is bad enough, but the film decides to make it several degrees worse. First of all, the mother in this film, played by Michelle Williams, is no longer that enamoured with her husband. She thinks he’s a miserable sod. Therefore their relationship is rather loveless. However, not to fear, a sleazy journalist played by Ewan McGregor pops up. And no sooner have they exchanged a few words than they’re exchanging bodily fluids on the young mother’s sofa. Crikey. (And no ladies, you don’t get to see Ewan’s penis in this film. However, you do get to see everything else.) And as they’re humping and pumping, they have a football game on the television. And at this game are the woman’s husband and young son. And would you believe it, as Ewan’s boning the shit out of her, the stadium goes ka-boom and it’s goodbye husband and son. Me thinks that that’s a shag she’s not going to forget for a long time.

After this you’d kind of think that the woman would suffer some pretty serious psychosexual problems. But this doesn’t stop the woman from having sex with the head of the anti-terrorist unit (the woman’s husband was in bomb disposal, so this guy was a work colleague). And this guy seems really nice. He just wants to look after her. Nevermind that he’s dull as ditchwater and that he loves caravans. He’s just a good, honest guy. Well, or so you’d think. I guess the woman should have noted the fact that the man has a beard, and as we all know, men with beards always have something to hide. Why else would they cover themselves in facial shrubbery? You see, the man knew that the terrorist attack was going to happen and did nothing to stop it. Oh, that’s pretty bad, isn’t it? You were cheating on your husband as he went up in flames and now you’ve shagged the man who could have stopped it from happening. Maybe those psychosexual problems will finally kick in.

If this all sounds far-fetched, it’s because it is. But the film isn’t finished with the nonsense. The woman strikes up a friendship with the young son of one of the bombers. Okay, this has potential for bonding and mutual healing. But no, there’s a sequence where the two of them are at Waterloo train station. The kid is still unaware that his daddy was one of the bombers – he thinks he’s just gone away – and as he’s waiting for the woman to buy tickets, he sees newspapers with his dad’s face plastered all over them. Needless to say he’s a bit upset and begins behaving a little erratically. He then runs away. The police see this and because he’s Asian and has a backpack, they take chase. The woman chases as well, and they all end up on an empty train platform. Every party shouts a lot, and as the boy reaches into his jacket, the police prepare to shoot. But as a marksman pulls the trigger, the woman steps into his sights and gets shot in the head by mistake. Holy Jean Charles de Menezes, Batman, the police fucked up again!

But don’t fear. The woman only gets grazed by a bullet so everything is hunky-dory.

Amongst all this ridiculous melodrama there are a few good scenes. The best one is when the mother seriously begins to lose the plot and thinks that her son has come back. She spends all her time in the flat playing with him. She then leaves to get some food and the spell is broken when she actually has some real human interaction. When she rushes back her son is no longer there and she’s devastated.

However, this scene leads directly to another one of the film’s maudlin flights of fancy. In response to the tragedy, a barrage balloon for every victim hangs in the sky with a picture of the victim on it. This to me sounds like an awful idea. Could you imagine that? You’re just trying to get over the ordeal and you look out of the window and see your little Billy grinning from the sky. Yeah, nice one.

And so the woman realises that her son is really dead and decides to visit his barrage balloon. And to do so she has to stand on a tall roof and teeter on the edge. Will she kill herself or not? Now the barrage balloons I hated (even though they make a neat visual, the very idea is incredibly OTT), but we now have another one of the film’s few decent sequences. We see the boy and the father talking about the Great Fire of London. The boy asks what they did back then, and the father says that everyone had a cup of tea. We then have a voiceover where the woman says that many people have tried to destroy this city but no one has succeeded. Every time someone tries to knock it down, we rebuild. And that’s what she’s got to do with her life. She’s got to rebuild it. The film didn’t deserve to generate any emotion, but a love of my home city meant that for once I actually felt something in this preposterous movie.

A couple of other things that are wrong with this film: the attack is meant to happen at an Arsenal game. However, probably because of licensing problems, the fans and players wear fake kits. A real Arsenal logo is nowhere to be seen. And we also have lots of moments where we hear the woman writing letters to Osama bin Laden. She wonders whether he celebrated when he heard about the bomb. Have the filmmakers forgotten that Osama is a massive Arsenal fan? For greater authenticity they should have had him blow up Tottenham Hotspur. Or at the very least, West Ham United. Maybe then it might have seemed a bit more real.

I’m sure like many kids who grew up in the 80s I thought it would be neat to see Darth Vader before he turned evil. You know, how did he turn into such a gigantic bastard? And how did all the Jedi get wiped out? Yeah, I kind of wish I’d never found out.

The biggest mistake in The Phantom Menace is the casting of a kid as Anakin Skywalker. Come on, who really wants to see Darth Vader as a nine-year old? Who wants to see the evil one at an age where he’s still being tucked in for beddy-byes? Well, George Lucas apparently. But he surely must be the only one.

In the first trilogy we’re constantly told that Luke Skywalker is too old to start the training. I always thought this seemed strange, seeing as he looked about ten. But finally we have a kid who actually is about ten and once again we’re told he’s too old to start Jedi training. For fucks sake, how young do the Jedi take them? On second thoughts, maybe I don’t really want to know.

But the consequences of casting a child in the role are disastrous. Lucas is obviously under the impression that seeing Vader as an innocent child will add to the tragedy, but instead it just gives the film a queasy paedo vibe.

First of all, there’s the idea that little kids will be whisked away from their parents by strange men. ‘Oh, hello. I’ve just met your son. Just seeing him made me feel the Force quite strongly. Do you mind if I take him far away so that I can train him? Don’t worry. Everything will be okay. I’ll teach him well and you’ll never see him again. Bye.’ Doubtless the children are whisked away by the promise of puppies and sweeties in the Jedi’s cockpit.

Then there’s how inappropriate the relationship is between Anakin and the Queen, played by Natalie Portman. From the very start we know they become lovers, so every time they share a lingering glance you remember that at a later date they’re going to butt heads. It’s icky. This woman is going to nail this seven year-old.

One instance occurs after Anakin has left his mother’s bosom. He’s talking to the Queen and seems rather sad. ‘I care for you,’ he says. ‘Only I…’ And then the Queen butts in and says that he misses his mother. No, I don’t think that’s it. He has a new mother now. One who probably gives him a strange feeling somewhere. He feels the Force every time he sees her. Blech.

And at the very end when the Queen lovingly looks over at Anakin, I could only think that they’re going to shag. I do believe I almost puked in my mouth.

Jesus Christ. Why couldn’t Lucas just make him a teenager? You’d have better choice as regards acting talent and you wouldn’t be constantly reminded of how inappropriate the whole thing is. I mean, for fuck’s sake, the Jedi council meet up at the top of a tower that looks exactly like a giant phallus. And there they interrogate little children and get them to reveal their deepest fears. They should have stayed with their mothers.

And while I’m on the subject of the Jedi, I have to mention how disappointing they are. In the first trilogy, you only have Obi Wan and Luke Skywalker to look to. And they were cool – well, Luke was cool eventually. Therefore, when you think about many Jedi, you think of a group of brilliant warrior monks. You know, hardasses that are all spiritual and shit. But instead you have a bunch of terminally boring dullards who sit there all day talking nonsense. Plus the Council looks like an alien Benetton commercial. You have an alien of every shape, size and colour as a member. They don’t look like warriors. They look like they’re advertising a diversity campaign. And one of them is even a conehead. The alien design in this film is appalling.

Speaking of design, Yoda looks rotten in this film. Somehow puppet technology has regressed in the 16 years between The Phantom Menace and Return of the Jedi. It looks like Yoda has been injecting himself with Botox – his face is expressionless.

And it’s horrible how the film kills the mystery of the previous trilogy. Suddenly the Force is a virus or something. It lives in our blood and we can even take a test to see how strong it is in us. Great. Instead of the Force being an amorphous connection with the universe, it’s now like a good form of HIV. ‘The bad news is you have a blood disorder. The good news, though, is that it means you can pick up shit with your mind and see the future.’

And apparently the midi-chlorians (the things that live in someone’s blood and communicate with the Force) had sex with Anakin’s mum and conceived him. He has no father. Sigh. So now Anakin is Jesus gone bad. This is what would have happened to Christ if he’d been an alien, if he’d had a lightsaber and if he’d listened to Satan? Great.

But the worst thing about the film is all the racial stereotypes. The bad guys speak in comedy Japanese accents, Jar Jar is a buffoonish black man and Watto is a miserly Jew. They’re all handled with the subtlety of a Nazi salute up your arse. And even though Jar Jar is thoroughly irritating and objectionable, it’s Watto who is perhaps the most offensive. After all, he’s hideously ugly, he has a hook nose and he worships money above everything else. You’d think that Adolf himself had conceived this character.

And the CGI for Watto is completely gratuitous. He flies. But not for any real reason, just because he can. Now that ILM has the technology, Lucas decides he wants his characters to crawl and fly and slither and run across the screen. There’s visual clutter everywhere. Every frame is over-packed with…stuff.

There are only two good things in the film: the fight with Darth Maul and the pod race. And even the pod race is packed with nonsense. First we have the annoying two-headed commentator, then we have silly aliens that look like they’ve popped up from a Looney Tunes cartoon and then we have the predictability of the whole sequence. But still, the pod effects are good and it’s reasonably exciting. For a very brief time, you have fun.

But far better is the lightsaber duel. It almost makes the film worthwhile.

What’s so pleasing about the lightsaber fight is how simple it’s kept. Yes you have the gimmick of the double-ended dildo (I mean saber), but apart from that it’s just three people trying to chop each other to bits. There’s no dialogue, no distractions in the background. It’s just a good, pure fight.

My favourite bit is when it’s just down to Maul and Obi Wan. There’s real intensity between them. They’re really going for it. This is how you envisioned another Star Wars film when you were a kid.

But just to bring you down to Earth, cut around the fight are three awful action sequences. There’s a tiresome space battle, a pointless blaster shoot-out, and, worst of all, a hideous CGI battle between the Gungans and some robots. Somehow we’re meant to enjoy the sight of Jar Jar Binks accidentally killing robots by getting a robot torso stuck to his leg. Oh how endearing. Oh how hilarious. Yes, fart gags, idiot aliens and paedophilic relationships were just what the Star Wars series needed.