Since this is going to post after opening weekend, I'm guessing that most of you who are brave enough to venture out and see whether or not the movie sucked will have already seen it. If you haven't seen it because you just hated those last two movies I 'll use my bully pulpit to say that it doesn't suck, and that it's safe to plunk down your hard earned kopecks and check it out because it's not half bad. Not only is it better than the last two movies (a low bar to clear, I grant you), it's better than Willow, Howard The Duck and any other movie that has bore George Lucas' name since Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981.

That's not to say it's a perfect movie -- there are still some eye-rolling moments (Lucas, along with several other filmmakers, needs to learn that "no" is a two letter word and not a twelve-letter one) and the love scenes between Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman in the first half of the movie are just as badly written and chemistry free as they were in the previous installment (Attack of the Clones), but in this film they are, thankfully, very brief. And they do serve to set up a genuinely affecting scene later on in the movie, so they do serve a larger purpose beyond merely taking you out of the movie. (Also, while Ms. Portman is normally a very fetching young lady, for the first scene in her apartment with Anakin she's lit in some kind of way that makes her look very greasy and skanky.)

But all of the political mumbo-jumbo that ground The Phantom Menace to a halt finally gels into something here. Ian McDiarmid, while unctuously effective in all of hs appearances as the Emperor in the series, really gets some things to run with in this movie. The scene between the Emperor and Anakin Skywalker in the balcony of a theater, in which he is told the story of the first lord of the sith, Darth Plagueis, and his apparent mastery over the forces of life and death, is one of the best scenes in the series, and the writing in it is as good as it was when Lucas had folks like Leigh Brackett (who used to write for Howard Hawks on several of his classic films with Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne) and Lawrence Kasdan writing for him. While not all of the movie is this well written, the action is so relentless and so impressive I was willing to begrudge Lucas the occasional groaner.

For instance, while I stand by my earlier attack on the early scenes between the "young lovers" in the movie, the moment wihen Padme tells Anakin she's pregnant, there is a great look on Hayden Christensen's face that captures the "oh shit" look of a teenager who has just knocked up his girlfriend. And Christensen, much like Mark Hamill in the first run of episodes, has grown in the third film to be a little less callow as a screen presence and his performance as a whole seems cranked up a couple of notches.

Of course, there's also that moment all the French journalists seemed to glom on to: Anakin's (or I guess I should say Darth Vader's) line to Obi Wan, "You're either with me or you're my enemy" that could be Lucas' snap back to George W. Bush. I saw the film at a midnight show in Chicago (which is a town that swings pretty much to the left) and the audience there seemed to really pick up on that as well. It's funny that this film ended up being made when it did, since you can't help but think a little of leaders that use fear to keep their populace from questioning what they're doing due to our current situation. If that was indeed Mr. Lucas' intention when he put that line in the script, then I'll shoot back one of his own lines to him: "You're braver than I thought!"

There was also something I enjoyed in the lightsaber battles, which is how close in the camera gets to the action this time around. While before the fights have been staged in the classic Errol Flynn/Michael Curtiz longshot style, this time the tighter angles add an effective level of disorientation to the action that works well in creating, perhaps, the confusion of a close-quarters fight.

There was also a big deal made about Chewbacca showing up in this movie. All I can say about that is don't go to the bathroom or you might miss him in the movie. The battle on the wookie planet is pretty quick and was one time I wanted him to go a little more whole hog on the effects.

Or course, I should be thankful for a little restraint. For a series that seemed to veering toward the thuddingly obvious and kid-pandering, the fact that Lucas can still pull the reins back on the effect sequences at all is a sign of some hope.

Half the world that goes to the movies knows how this thing ends, and it does tie in pretty neatly with the other installments. Lucas has once again made what he used to turn out so effortlessly -- a fun little Saturday afternoon movie with a little bit of something extra to chew on. Let's hope he continues on to his next production with an equally sure foot.