Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

Film event of the year? This depends on you. The long-awaited fourth instalment of the Star Wars series has attracted such ridiculous reams of relentless hype that it can't help but obscure the project itself - we are, after all, talking about a simple two-hour adventure/fantasy film for kids from six to sixty, not the Second Coming of Christ.

Millions of devotees worldwide have spent sixteen years waiting for this moment with awe-ful anticipation, while a whole new generation of fans is sure to be swept up in the excitement. Two million Yanks were so overcome with anticipation that they took the day off work when The Phantom Menace opened, so you can hazard a guess as to just how significant the film is to people's lives.

The flipside is that Star Wars runs the risk of disappointing many, especially the obsessives who worshipped at the altar of the first three films and now find themselves twenty years older, their expectations raised by years of exposure to increasingly spectacular blockbusters. And, sure enough, Phantom Menace suffers badly by comparison to something like The Matrix, its narrative and atmosphere seeming curiously childish and uninventive when set in the context of what we've been led to expect. It's probable that most of the audience will enjoy it to at least some extent, but there's no denying that The Phantom Menace is a hopelessly inferior work to its predecessors, and it's impossible to imagine it casting a spell over the imaginations of millions the way 1977's first instalment did.

As you will doubtless have heard, Phantom Menace is set chronologically in advance of the first Star Wars. Its anti-hero is a nine-year-old boy named Anakin Skywalker, who will one day metamorphose into the dastardly Darth Vader: the kid is excellently played by little Jake Lloyd, and he looks like the most demonically evil little bastard since The Omen's Damien. The key conceit is a dispute between the Nazi-ish Trade Syndicate and the peaceful planet of Naboo; Jedi Knights Qui-Gonn Jin (Neeson) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (McGregor) whose job is to keep the universal peace, rescue the planet's queen (Natalie Portman)before discovering the Skywalker boy, whom Qui-Gonn Jin senses is in touch with The Force.

You can probably tell by this stage that the plot is very much of secondary importance, but it could and should have been considerably neater. There's an inescapable sense that the real purpose behind the narrative is to set the scene for episodes five and six, and the ending feels fairly flat when it arrives.

All of which is not to suggest that Phantom Menace is a bad film, just an under-achieving one. The special-effects, of course, will surpass most people's wildest expectations: or the sporadic occasions that The Phantom Menace delivers, it does so spectacularly - it just has severe difficulty keeping up the pace throughout, and those inclined to pick holes in the plot could have a field day. Most disappointingly of all, the acting is sombre and joyless: Neeson holds the camera well enough but seems curiously charmless, while McGregor seizes the moment to deliver the worst performance of his career, misguidedly aiming for a hopelessly misbegotten English accent that on occasion makes you wince.

The Phantom Menace was never aimed at cynical curmudgeons like me anyway - its visual dazzle will be immensely enjoyable to most viewers, and completely mesmerising to those under the age of ten or so. It may even turn out to be the springboard for two more classic instalments - but on its own merits, in view of all the hype, and by objective comparison with its predecessors, Phantom Menace is a middling success at best.