Word: queen
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...encounter two cloaked figures, Jedi master Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) and his apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), who are trying to prevent a war between the greedy Trade Federation and the small, peaceful planet of Naboo. Traveling along with the planet's teenaged queen Amidala (Natalie Portman) to appeal to the senate of the galactic republic, they pit-stop on the desert planet of Tatooine to make crucial repairs on their damaged ship...
...kids, they're passable. Portman is also not given much to do as the divinely painted-up queen, and she seems a little overwhelmed by the giant scale of the project. Sometimes her lines (which were redubbed in post-production) don't exactly synch with the scene, but she's a pretty young thing, and it's forgivable. And talk of Lloyd's wooden performance (he had been dubbed "Mannequin Skywalker" by certain crewmembers) isn't really fair. The kid's no natural, but he gives a straightforward, acceptable read, especially considering the artificial dialogue he's given--that second...
...that was a fairly allegorical and satirical decision. The teacher's story was much more a serious character study and that came from an anecdote I read in the paper--I believe it was a teacher in a Southern state who had burned a box of votes for prom queen because the students had elected a pregnant girl. And didn't approve of that so he decided to--woops!--burn the votes. And he was sort of defiant asserting his right to establish a moral example. I was interested in this type of character--a teacher like me who wasn...
...beyond decorative quoting: it informs the structure of Lucas' script so that Episode I gets lost in a world of juicy but ultimately soulless revelation. Every five minutes a new character makes its incredibly propitious entrance into the Star Wars saga--R2-D2 is the droid that saves the queen's ship from destruction and C-3PO was Darth Vader's boyhood engineering hobby--Tatooine just happens to be the most convenient planet for a pit stop...
Hoffman stages their play-within-a-play with energetic conviction, and Bottom's misalliance with Titania, the fairy queen (Michelle Pfeiffer), is played with a certain sexy intensity. But the human lovers (who include Calista Flockhart as the comically obsessed Helena), muddled by the carelessness of Stanley Tucci's smug Puck with his love potions, don't achieve firm definition. Lacking the center of concern they might provide, this version of the play becomes a collection of well-loved scenes: dutiful but mostly unmagical...