Photographs ©LucasFilm Ltd.™ All rights reserved. Digital work by ILM

This might be the most needless review ever to appear in TIME. It will enlighten few, enrage many. It will dissuade no one from seeing Star Wars: Episode I--The Phantom Menace or reseeing it a dozen times. It may achieve no goal but to confirm the received opinion that critics are vindictive prunes who take pleasure only in being displeased. "Don't believe the critics!" shouted one first-day fan to the CNN cameras. "The critics know nothing!" We know that we do not matter, yet we must speak. And so here--from the critic who wrote that Titanic was artistically "dead in the water"--goes nothing.

The Phantom Menace--surely the most avidly awaited, assiduously hyped film since Gone With the Wind 60 years ago--is a space-age vehicle that creaks. Sleekly designed and smartly upholstered, it seems robot-driven, untenanted by humans. Maybe this is the future of movies: digitized, with fabulous detailing and performances that can be morphed to arid perfection. If so, no thanks. We'll take Casablanca.

George Lucas has proved, with the Star Wars and Indiana Jones trilogies, that he is a superb producer, a canny reviver of old movie forms, a wizard manipulator of tomorrow's special effects. But on the set, saying Action and Cut for the first time in 22 years, he is an indifferent director. He doesn't bring his own visions to persuasive life. As drama, the film lacks art and heart. And by heart we don't mean the elevated sentimentality and specious nobility of such audience favorites as Life Is Beautiful and The Full Monty. (Is there anyone we haven't offended yet?) You don't need a child in jeopardy to make compelling drama. You need narrative drive and attention to character nuance; they give sizzle and elegance to a glance, a line of dialogue, a scene and, shot by shot, a movie. All that is missing here. Many scenes have the feel of a first run-through by actors trying on their characters like off-the-rack costumes.

We may be setting the bar too high--as high as the movie's hype. As one woman said upon leaving an early screening, "What do you want for $9?" What you get in The Phantom Menace is panoramic entertainment with several terrific set pieces of action, stalwart acting from the Brits (and some very raw work by the kids), a precise, luscious visual design, a multilevel climactic battle and a funeral pyre that echo Return of the Jedi, and a triumphal coda from the first Star Wars film (1977). All that, and a lot of talk.

The plot has long been familiar to anyone with access to a computer or magazine. Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and his apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), hoping to settle a dispute between the flabby Republic and an insurgent Trade Federation, find Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman) on the planet Naboo. Diverted to Tatooine, they meet the boy Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd), who has a mysterious force--perhaps the Force. They amass for a face-off against battle droids and the malefic Darth Maul (Ray Park).

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