STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI.......MAY THE CASH BE WITH YOU.........

Star Wars VIII The Last Jedi (2017)    In the midst of the bitter titanic feud between Disney and the armies of enraged fanboys and fangirls, the BQ will struggle to hold on to the sweet memory of Memorial Day weekend in 1977......

................when the first 'Star Wars' took us all by surprise and took the whole world by storm........

                What an astounding delight that experience was for the audience........something we've only seen duplicated in the roaring response to the first Sean Connery Bond films.c

                But here we are, 41 years later.

                Star Wars is now Disney corporate product......each film processed like a giant hot dog....composed of ground up chunks of previous Star Wars movies......

                 It's pointless to apply critical analysis to these films........it's like comparing one Big Mac to another.

                  So we'll do our usual thing and just point out the stuff that bounced off randomly.....

                  Luke The Grumpy Old Jedi  A true Space Oddity.......that film critics mostly embraced the idea of turning Luke into a whiny, neurotic Debbie Downer, while the fan base practically exploded their own heads in rage.   On this one, we're with the fans.......a stupid, perverse move and a criminal waste of one of the SW Universe's most pivotal characters......

                  Disney Channel humor......imported into the movie directly from the company sitcoms populated by middle school show-offs insulting each other.......yuk.

                  Poe Dameron (Oscar Issac)  Holy X-Wings, is this guy annoying or what?.......he seems only mildly annoyed as he notices that his suicide space battles usually kill off most of his fellow pilots........and then there's this whole "Crimson Tide" tug-of-war he has with Laura Dern's character.......(we were waiting to see if they'd start arguing about whether the Lipizzaner stallions came from Spain or Portugal.....)

                   Porgs  Call us crazy, but we love the sheer naked, greedy honesty of them......they're there to stock the stuffed animal shelves at the Disney stores,fill the registers with cash, nothing more........at least nobody foolishly has them beating up Imperial Stormtroopers with wooden sticks......

                  The Outer Space Las Vegas.....they left out who's appearing year 'round in the big rooms.....where's the intergalactic Britney and Celine Dion??

                 Snoke  Who and what the hell is this guy, anyway?  And why does he look like a leftover mummy from the Brendan Fraser movies?

                   Kylo Ren (Adam Driver)  Oh hell no.....we wouldn't waste our time trying to assess this character. His behavior, motivations and intentions operate only on screenwriting whim from scene to scene.  He sounds like a roomful of writers took turns with his dialogue......and none of them ever consulted with each other.

                    Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran)   We liked her just fine........but poor Tran found herself besieged and insulted on social media by those vile hordes of 39 year old, 300 pound guys who live in their parents' basements.  (Much like Trump, they've nothing to do all day but compose idiotic, bullying tweets)   So she bailed out of the internet........leaving the trolls to return to masturbation and Dunkin Donuts with sprinkles......good for her......and here's wishing coronaries to all her tormentors.

                     Sorry, but we prefer to keep a safe distance from this new era of Star Wars......and by that we mean all of it......the never-ending Disney-manufactured hype, the boiling anger of the fans and  the movies themselves.........noisy, snarky and in their pre-packaged calculation,....and light years removed from the primal fun and innocence of the those first films.

                      For "The Last Jedi", 1& 1/2 stars (* 1/2)........it made our fond memories of that 1977 Memorial Day weekend....something from a kinder, gentler galaxy, far far away.....