Daisy Ridley, Mark Hamill
“STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI” My rating: C
152 minutes |MPAA rating: PG-13
Over the last 40 years “Star Wars” films have thrilled and delighted (the original “A New Hope”) and occasionally pissed off and dismayed (the George Lucas-directed prequels).
But until now I’ve never been bored.
We’re talking I-don’t-know-if-I-can-keep-my-eyes-open bored.
It’s not that “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” is terrible. It’s just that writer/director Rian Johnson is so handcuffed by the franchise’s mythology that there’s no hope of actually delivering anything new and unusual.
A “Star Wars” movie is now like a giant hamster wheel. We keep loping along but the scenery never changes. The same narratives, motifs and tropes play out over and over again. The filmmakers may tinker with small details, but there’s no way they can give this series the swift kick in the narrative ass it needs.
Actually, Johnson (“Loopers,” “Brick,” “The Brothers Bloom”) delivers a flash of hope early in “Last Jedi” when the pompous General Hux (Domhnail Gleeson) delivers one of those vituperative “rebel swine” declamatory speeches, only to be phone pranked by rebel pilot Poe Dameron who cuts in on the imperial cruiser’s radio frequency.
It’s a refreshingly gonzo sequence, one that not only re-establishes Dameron as the new Han Solo but acknowledges the cardboard villainy that has always been the hallmark of “Star Wars” baddies.
Alas, that moment passes, never to be repeated. Yeah, there are a couple of mildly amusing flashes still on tap.
“If they move, stun ’em” one of our heroes says of captives, a clear nod to “The Wild Bunch’s” “If they move, kill ’em.” And we get a throwaway glimpse of an imperial dreadnaught’s laundry room where all those fascist uniforms are being starched.
But for the most part “Last Jedi” takes itself very, very seriously. It needs a lot more finger-in-the-eye subversiveness.
Butler's Cinema Scene 