RETURN OF THE JEDI (1983) **1/2 By the third go round all of this Star Wars malarkey is feeling more than a little bit hokey and contrived. George Lucas is no dummy-and could probably write an impressive philosophical film if he wanted to-so why does he spend so much time splashing around in the shallows? Good force/bad force and the stupid emperor is always trying to build a bigger Death Star, and the good people are trying to turn the bad ones good, and the bad people are trying to turn the good ones bad. Wow, I wonder who will win. And I don't know how anyone can sit through the unbearable dramatic utterances of Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher without either laughing or throwing up. And all these soap opera identity issues--I mean, at least they could work something humorous out of them. No one knows who they are, and yet nothing funny comes out of any of it? The action is entertaining though, and the pacing is brilliant until the entire thing bogs down on the Care Bear planet. But no one could think of anything more humorous about the dynamic between Harrison Ford and the Care Bears than to have them put him on a stick? And what the hell happened to his character, anyway? What happened to the cavalier attitude towards all, is there some subtext about heroes who rest on their laurels or something? Not intentionally, anyway, but dude. Dude. Billie Dee Williams is better, and Ian McDiarmid is so good as the ultimate incarnation of the dark side that I thought he might be Anthony Hopkins under there for a minute. It's a very cool looking movie-George Lucas continues to create glorious-looking aliens (the very blue elephant guy is my favorite)-and would be more than passable as a shorter entry in a fashion show. It's too easy to take how cool this stuff looks-the special effects, the imagination that went into the visual aspects, and the great craftsmanship on things like the emperor's lair and the walking tanks-for granted because we've seen most of it, or something similar, in the first two Star Wars films. Takes a lot of the oomph out of it, but it doesn't make it any less cool. Along the same lines, all of the intergalactic tribal music is cool and credible, but again, not quite the same as the cantina song in the original. I just have one question, though. I mean, I thought I had it all figured out, until Luke Skywalker took Darth Vader's helmet off. Luke Skywalker's father was Humpty-Dumpty?
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