Where Do I Start?

My ticket y'all!


Oh my heavens! What can I say other than I'm still flying over THE MOVIE. It brings everything full circle and draws that circle to a close. Seriously, go see it people. 2½ hours didn't seem like 2½ hours. And that is the kind of movie I like!

So, I went to see Revenge of the Sith at 12:01 a.m. I got there around 9:50 and they were already seating people. The theaters were already packed when I got there and the ONLY place left to sit was in chairs on the floor level. I was lucky and got one in the middle right in front of the stadium seating. So where do I start in my review? Why at the beginning of course.

I played solitaire, Snood and Elf Bowling on my phone to help pass the time. Snuck some energy drinks into the movie b/c hey, it was going to be a late night. Energy drinks don't do much for me except make me have to pee a lot. A whole lot. Must be the caffeine. I'll explain my resistance to caffeine in the 15 things about me later today. Luckily I only had to get up twice during the movie and I made sure that it was at a time when there wasn't a lot going on. Which was few and far between.

Sitting in a theater full of people I realized something, I can sing in front of a crowd, as long as they're not paying attention to me. Around 10:30 I called my mom, who was looking after Emily while I was at the movie to see if Emily was asleep. She wasn't. I usually sing to Emily to help her fall asleep at night or at least to push her to the point where she calms down enough to get to sleep. I had to sing 4 songs to her before I noticed that her voice was to the point where she was going to fall asleep. I just closed my eyes and ignored the hubbub of activity, light saber fights and voices going on around me and sang to her. Yes, I did say light saber fights. Went on every stinking 15 minutes or so by some overly enthusiastic amateurs and got old real quick after the first 2 times. SIGH!

But I know that you didn't come here to read about that. You want to know about THE MOVIE, yes? Even if the answer is "no", tough noogies. You're getting my review anyway.

First off the previews.

The first preview was AMAZING, SPECTACULAR and had the ENTIRE theater whistling, clapping and cheering. What was is you ask? None other than the preview for The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe. The special effects were un-freaking-believable! Nothing looked CGI at all. The preview was at least 2 or 3 minutes long. The theater went WILD for it. The movie has been moved up from December 19 to December 9 and I CAN NOT WAIT for it to come out. Yes, I must confess that the CON (Chronicles of Narnia) are my favorite books hands down and I own quite a bit of CON memorabilia including a couple of 2nd edition books and one 1st edition printing of some of the CON from the 40's as well as some of the board games from England, a Narnia advent calendar that is behind a wardrobe door and other assorted items. I've written Narnian fanfic, have a Narnian character name and am one of the original members of the online Yahoo Narnia group. My name is Nicole Boedeker and I am a TOTAL Narnia Geek!

The rest of the previews looked singularly uninspiring after the LWW preview with the exception of Batman Begins. That one looked pretty darn good.

SO, 12:15ish rolls around and the Lucasfilm, LTD logo fills the screen and the theater gets frenzied at this point. It starts out with these familiar words appearing on the screen:

A long time ago,
In a galaxy far, far away...

And the crowd goes wild with thunderous applause and deafening cheers.

Ok, let me just pause here to say this:

The score: PHENOMINAL! Williams really outdoes himself on this final score in tying a lot of recognizable music from all the other 5 episode scores together in this one. Beautifully done!

The acting: Some characters I had issues with b/c the acting was wooden. Like it was being forced at times (cough...cough...Natalie/Hayden love scenes..cough). But even those characters (separately had good acting too. Mercifully JarJar, though he shows up in the movie, utters not one blessed word. Thank you George for that! Best acting award goes to Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine/Darth Sidious. He HIT this one out of the park, people. His acting here is outstanding. Runner up, Ewan McGregor. Ewan really got the essence of the original brilliant actor to play Ben Kenobi, Sir Alec Guinness. It is like you ARE watching Sir Alec as a younger man. Brilliantly played. His acting in the last 30 minutes just TEARS at your heartstrings. Also Yoda was masterfully CGI'd and exceptionally well done. A couple of scenes were really deeply heartrending while a couple of others provided for some of the very few lighter moments of the movie. This is a MUCH darker movie so those are very few indeed.

***Parents, young kids SHOULD NOT go see this. There is a lot of violence and Ani as Darth kills the younglings in the temple. Though not shown, the aftermath is shown and it is HEAVILY implied. It definitely shows that the younglings trusted Master Skywalker and he slaughtered them. Could really give younger kids bad dreams about people they know wanting to kill them or something. Kid's psyches are fragile enough without having to endure something like that as well. But you are aware of what your younger children can handle and can't. Please be aware of this before taking them to see it b/c you think it would be a "cool" experience like you had as a kid seeing the originals. This is much more intense, scary and violent than any of the other 5 episodes. If you have doubts, wait for the DVD. Ok, enough of the public service message and spoilers. ***

The special effects: Way above par. While there were several green screen effects that were very noticable - the Ani/Padme suite effects of being on the balcony and seeing the city in the background was the most noticable I thought. Interesting that the more complex CGI effects were seamless, especially Yoda, the volcanic planet
and the space/ground battles.

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So I decided that I would rather not finish the synopsis of it and stick with my review above. To do an in depth synop as I was doing, would have taken up too much time and ruined it for someone who hasn't seen it yet. Just know that I LOVED IT!