Film: The Big Picture: A total waste of space

STARS WARS EPISODE ONE: THE PHANTOM MENACE (U) DIRECTOR: GEORGE LUCAS STARRING: LIAM NEESON, EWAN McGREGOR, NATALIE PORTMAN 133 MINUTES

So here it is at last. After months of fanfare and acres of newsprint, the Motion Picture Event of the decade, the century, the whole goddamn millennium, is finally upon us, and it rejoices under the unwieldy title of Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace. In case you haven't heard, it's the first of three prequels to the original Star Wars trilogy, George Lucas's epic summation of life, the universe and everything and, by the by, a pop culture phenomenon that has inspired years of fetishistic devotion and million-dollar fortunes in merchandising spin-offs. Yes, that's right, the first of three - so like it or not, you can prepare to hear a whole lot more about that long time ago, and that galaxy far, far away.

The Phantom Menace is set 30 years earlier than the original saga, though in terms of plot, not much has changed: a female sovereign with a preposterous hairdo needs help. This time around it's not Princess Leia but Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman), who rules over the planet Naboo and is now under threat from the tyrannical Trade Federation, a sort of intergalactic Mafia without the fancy tailoring. Determined to foil the Federation's expansionist plans are two Jedi Knights, the young Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his mentor, Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson), who are soon laying about a droid army with their trademark lightsabres.

Having rescued the Queen, the Jedi warriors are forced to make a pitstop for repairs on a ramshackle planet, where they encounter a boy named Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd). Qui-Gon discerns in this unlikely moppet a messianic destiny, the one who will "bring balance to the force" - and thus furnish enough material to pad out the next two instalments.

There, in essence, is the set-up; yet no summary can convey the spirit of a movie whose defining characteristics are pomposity, vulgarity and dreariness. "I have a bad feeling about this," says Obi-Wan Kenobi in the opening sequence and he wasn't the only one. For whatever advances George Lucas has made as a special-effects pioneer in the 20 years since Star Wars, he has forgotten the basic requirements of movie-making - pace, suspense and character development. In short, all the stuff you can't patch in on a computer.

The first Star Wars wasn't exactly chock-full of narrative complexity either, but it did have the sceptical Han Solo as an antidote to the self-importance. Here the chief source of "comedy" is a creature named Jar Jar Binks, a long-snouted alien who talks an incomprehensible patois, gets into scrapes and kills the film stone-dead every time he appears.

Next to the bizarre cavalcade of digital walk-ons (Jabba the Hutt and Yoda both make appearances), the human characters have to take their chances. Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn finds an expression of heroic patience and somehow, given the nonsense around him, manages to fix on it. Ewan McGregor was presumably asked to approximate a vocal fit to Alec Guinness (who played the original Obi-Wan Kenobi) and ends up sounding like one of those constipated RP twits from ancient public information films. And what words they've been given to speak. "Your focus determines your reality," Qui-Gon tells his pupil. "Be mindful of the living Force, my young Padawan." What the hell does that mean?

The one casting hope I had of the film was Natalie Portman, a droll and graceful young actress whose Lolita-next-door in Beautiful Girls stands as one of the decade's most eloquent performances. Here she not only has to wear some of the film's silliest costumes and make-up, but sounds like the love-child of a robot and Queen Victoria. The vocal stylings of the other characters betray more of the film-makers' xenophobia than perhaps they know: the snub-faced Federation goons have been saddled with fiendish Yellow Peril accents a la Fu Manchu, while the frontier merchant who barters Anakin's life is a bulbous, hook-nosed hummingbird auditioning for the role of Shylock.

Let us concede, however, that the niceties of script and characterisation may not greatly impinge on the popcorn-crunching mall crowd that is the movie's core audience. What excitement lies in store for them? The film's big set-piece is a pod race in which Anakin comes into his own as a speed demon. It's a nod to the chariot race in Ben-Hur, with this vital difference: in Ben-Hur the action seemed to unfold before our eyes. Lucas's race, however, whips by at arcade-game speed, and the outcome is never in doubt. Where there is no sense of scale, there is no sense of risk.

What puts an edge on its awfulness are the pretentious allegorical implications. Lucas has previously blathered on about the struggle between Good and Evil and the search for meaning in Star Wars, but in The Phantom Menace he forces the parallels: Anakin, it transpires, is an immaculate conception, and the humble homestead is kitted out to look like Palestine. When the young Messiah faces the prospect of leaving his mother to become a Jedi, I mistakenly admired the restraint with which their parting was dramatised. Then I realised it was simply that Lucas couldn't write a decent farewell scene to save his life.

Defenders of this wholly maculate conception will point to its visual bravura, and to set designs of striking ingenuity - the underwater city and the galactic senate house can hardly fail to rivet one's gaze. Yet their grandeur simply points up the monumental emptiness of the drama. So many scenes feel half-finished, while meaningless reaction shots leave actors gawping into the middle distance. Lucas should get out and meet a few people - then he might wise up to the way conversations actually work.

I wish I could lighten up about The Phantom Menace, but its cynicism and hollowness have sunk me in a depression. Movie-goers should be allowed to make their own mistakes, of course - and there won't be a bigger one all year than paying to see this trash.

The week's other releases are reviewed on page 12