Basically, I'm doing "Caustic Critic" reviews of things I feel have been neglected by most of these reviewers. I have no idea why, but those people just don't cover these things. Well someone has to do it, so I'm going to. Usually these will be games and movies, but other things will be covered as well. I'll even take recommendations.

Also, there will be some foul language here. Hopefully not as much as the Angry Video Game Nerd, but I'm just giving you a fair warning.

Here's part 1.

Now last time, some did say the review was a little long. So I'll try to keep it down here, just focusing on the really stupid parts. Also, I wrote in a reply that I would do a movie this time, hoping the pain would be over in just a few hours, and this did turn out better than I expected. Not that it's any good, just that this is one of those so bad, it's good movies you can get drunk with your friends and enjoy.

As for what the film is, you probably heard of "The Turkish Star Wars", or Starcrash "The Italian Star Wars" (can't have a ripoff of a hit movie without them), or Deathsport "The Roger Corman Star Wars", and some of you might have even heard of "The Brazilian Star Wars". But this is a movie that tops them all in obscurity. I'm reviewing A New Hope, aka "The American Star Wars".

The movie begins with something that is admittedly painful, that is if the volume is too loud. The opening music is a blast of trumpets that just doesn't fucking stop until the end of the opening text crawl. Yeah, a text crawl is "so original". And it's just a bunch of backstory you don't care about, that is if it has anything to do with what's going on.

The next shot is the good guys' spaceship getting chased by the bad guys's ship. And of course it will be several minutes into the film before we even know why. And the shot of the villains' ship is just goes on for too long. It's one of those shots that just screems "We pait a lot of money for this effect, so we're putting as much of it in the movie as we can". And the ship itself is a triangle. Believe it or not, this won't be the last ship that looks like grade school geometry shapes.

Of course the bad guys catch the good guys and board their ship. After a firefight the good guys lose (no, I'm not doing that "Gee, I'm glad the movie's over already" jokes), the main villain of the movie shows up. And his costume... they ripped off Dr. Doom. It's almost embarrasing. Oh, and he has, I'm not kidding, the worst leitmotif of any character in the history of movies. It's not even music, just the sound of someone breathing into a metal tube.

Then it turns out there is a princess on the ship, she's captured, and two robots get away. I don't know, the plot doesn't really make any sense, but why it just focuses on them for the next twenty minutes is just weird.

Oh, and there is one part I did find offensive. These robots don't even have names, just numbers. Talk about dehumanizing people.

Aftger stumbling around this desert planet they land on, they get captured by desert mutants, and then they get bought by some farmers (farmers on a desert, just go with it), and one of the people at this farm is a guy named Luke Skywalker.

You read that right, Luke Skywalker. This movie isn't supposed to take place on Earth, or have anything to do with Earth, so how could he have the name "Luke", that has it's roots in the Biblical angel Lucifer?

Well he's told to take care of the robots, fading to this scene that has one of the freakiest lines in the whole movie. The golden robot says "Thank the maker. This oil bath is goint to feel so good!"

That wouldn't be so bad, except he's doing it in front of Luke and the other robot. That's just gross!

Well after that nightmarish line, the film makes up for it with the most unintentionally funny part so far. The shorter robot shows a hologram, and the special effects people left the hologram on a loop. This is up there with the "girl gets killed, and is there on the bridge next scene" in Space Mutiny. It's that inept.

The for god-knows-what reason, the shorter robot runs off, and Luke and the Golden robot follow him into the desert. They run across desert mutants other than the ones from earlier, but are saved by some old guy. His name is Ben, another Earth name. But I'll give the movie credit for unoriginal names, since the original names are just... his last name is Kenobee, or Kinobi, or Kenoo... however the hell you spell it. The point is the original names are bad. They just sound like mashed-up syllables.

Anyway, Ben gives Luke a laser sword. Man, of all the dumb things to make up for this movie. I could buy a sword that shoots lasers, like in The Legend of Zelda, since that's fantasy. But this... is just stupid. Oh, but the best part is Ben showing what an old fogey he is by gushing about how much better weapons were in his day.

Oh, you kids, with your blasters, and your protocol droids, and your hyperdrives. In my day we had to walk 20 light years through the snow to get to another planet. And we were thankful for it!

Then the first act ends on a pretty grim note, with his farm getting blown up. Sure it's a little late for the movie to try to be dramatic, but that's a pretty effective scene.

Then Luke decides to leave this world with Ben, and they head off to a town that's supposed to be some kind of hive. It just looks like a town to me, so he might have been using a metaphor, but I don't want to give the writers that much credit.

While they are in the town, it turns out the bad guy's have a road block. They're looking for the robots, but Ben uses some magic power to let them pass. But we don't see any magic. He just waves his hand. And I thought Hawk The Slayer using silly string was balsy in how cheap it was.

They go to this bar, with music that I can only describe as "space jazz". It's not that bad admittedly, but this doesn't look like the kind of bar that plays jazz. There should be some AC/DC, or at least some generic county, playing.

The heroes find a pilot there named Hansel O. And he has a guy in a cheap Bigfoot outfit as his friend. So instead of some cute little animal, this movie has a cute big animal. Too bad it's still just as cute and annoying as those other kinds of characters, especially the growling. It's like a lion that's had one too many drinks.

Update: I've been informed that the pilot's name is Han Solo, as if that's any less stupid.

Oh, and Han tries to brag about what a good spaceship pilot he is by claiming his ship "made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs." Wow, I didn't know you could run in space, especially in distances like parsecs.

Well they go to his ship, and it's called the Millenium Falcon, and it looks that old. I'm surprised there wasn't any backfiring from the exhaust whey they took off. Oh, and just when they are about to leave, the bad guys shoot at them for some reason. You can't just have a fight for the sake of a fight. It makes no sense.

But this is running a little long. I'll finish this in the next post.

After the Falcon takes off, the bad guys are still chasing them, and Han gets ready to outrun them with the hyperdrive. Luke complains it's taking too long, and Han say's "Travelling through hyperspace aint' like dusting crops, boy." Now any attempt at drama is lost here. Okay, it's accidental, since this movie came out years before this joke, but now all I can think of is Luke responding with "I am a MAN!" *punch*.

Later on, Ben sits down for some reason and says "As if millions of voices cried out in terror, and were suddently silenced." I'd joke he's referring to the people who saw this movie, but I doubt that many did.

Oh, and they were supposed to go to some planet called Aler... something. But they end up in an asteroid field. That Han is some great pilot, right?

Then they find themselves at one of the bad guys' other ships. This time a giant circle. See what I meant about more geometric shapes? They get pulled in by a tractor beam, which again we don't see. Roger Corman wouldn't be this cheap... okay, he would, but that's not the point.

So they do the old "beat up henchmen and steal their uniforms" trick (which was practically cliche when The Wizard of Oz did it), and then go to disable the tractor beam.

But what a lucky coincidence, the princess is there as well. So they go to rescue her, get caught in a firefight, they jump down a hole to escape, and in the room they land in, Luke... gets assaulted by a tentacle monster.

I'm not fucking kidding. This film has just turned into hentai anime, except it's going after the wrong gender. Or perhaps it's a girl tentable monster. Thankfully that scene is over with, and we get into another firefight.

Oh, and when Ben says blasters were clumsy and random, he meant it. Both the good guys and the bad buys have horrible aim. Only about one in every ten shots seem to hit something. Heck, if you freeze frame some parts, you can see they try to make it look like the blasters are firing by making the set flash pink. And then the actors sometimes cloes their eyes when firing. How the heck do you expect to hit something doing that.

While most of the good guys are trying to get back to their shi, Ben confronts Dr. Doom, I mean Darth Vader (raise your hand if you managed to avoid snickering when you read that). Now the two go on about their past, and I'm trying to figure out what the hell is going on. Couldn't they at least give us a flashback or something? Anyway, the fight is so... it's not a fight at all. They wave their silly little laser swords around, with only one attempt at a swing every thirty seconds, while Ben goes on about "Justice will prevail," and crap like that.

And then Luke and the princess have to swing across a broken bridge. Yep, this film stopped being sci-fi, and turned into a Tarzan film. If someone could find a good clip of that scene, I would love to have that to "Tarzan Boy" on youtube. It would be so damn funny.

Finally, they escape, but Ben dies, because he put his sword in the wrong parry position. Just look. Vader swings from the side, and Ben holds his sword straight ahead of him and straight up. He couldn't block shit doing that.

Well Luke is upset, for about ten second. Han helps his get better by shooting some bad guy ships, that have wings that look like hexagons. Okay, what was the directors problem? Why are basic polygonal shapes portrayed as evil here? And why does this space battle look so much like a WWII dogfight? Why didn't they just use the actual footage from those if they were going to be that unoriginal?

They escape again, and land on sme planet with a bunch of soldiers. I don't know why, but it's the last act, so just roll with it. They decide to blow up that giant circle, for some reason, and the last part of the movie is this attack.

Oh, and remember how The Turkish Star Wars ripped off space battle footage from the actual Star Wars? So does this one. Just they apparently got some better footage, since it looks a lot cleaner.

And the fight is just as random as you'd expect with actors reacting to stock footage. And there's our third non-existant effect when the ghost voice of Ben tells Luke to use the "force" to improve his aim to blow up the giant circle. Again, we dont see anything other than him just getting the shot in. Didn't the special effects crew have at least a spare bag of glitter they could have thrown on Luke's hand to show he was using magic there?

Whatever, the movie almost over. The heroe's are celebrating destroying the evil giant circle, and the last scene rips off the Olympic medal ceremony. I'm surprised no flags and anthems were used.

So this movie is stupid, but it's an enjoyable stupid. Unfortunately, I don't think my next review will be.