I pretty much agree with the reviewer, but am inclined to be more forgiving. To me, this is simultaneously the worst Star Wars movie I've seen, and one of the better ones (definitely one of the most exciting). Unfortunately, these mixed feelings don't seamlessly follow the length of the movie, but rather represent a clean split in its acts - Acts 1 and 2 were just...awful. I was checking my phone and groaning like I walked into the Office Christmas Party by accident for an hour straight.
They set up the darker tone for a different sort of Star Wars nicely enough, but then the story starts spazzing out, jumping from location to location every two to five minutes, all the while tragically focusing on the misadventure of Jyn Erso, sad backstory stereotype 1/B7, sub-type 8Z and her ungainly, 2-dimensional mob of target audience stand-ins (hey look! It's the stick-wielding Chinese-market-man! You go get 'em, Donnie Yen. And by them, I mean dollars). Say what you will about the prequels, but at least I vaguely remember what their insipid, boring characters were about. Here, apart from K2 to a point, there are no characters, not a-one, just mouth-pieces and stunt doubles. There is no chemistry between any of them (unless you count the powerful, show-stopping Act 2 shoulder bump between Felicity Jones and Diego Luna), nobody is explored in any depth except to affirm that they were f-ed by the Empire in some stupid, evil way, and they all seem to enjoy nothing more than being brooding ciphers that vomit messages and plot-points at us. Speaking of the Empire, our main villain is just a bureaucrat with a gun, with no real powers or ability to thwart our "heroes" other than act like Snidely Whiplash to unarmed secondary characters. He is talked down at by all his peers, is always caught off-guard by Jyn and co. and never gets anything from his office's secret Santa. He is such a mediocre villain that I would've taken the Dark Elf king from Thor 2 over him. All that said, I don't think that the acting is bad (ou contraire, all the actors do their level best), but the script they had to work with would barely qualify as decent fanfiction at times.
And, because I just want to get it out of my system, in no particular order - the obnoxious and misplaced music stings, the truth-serum hentai monster, the Darth Vader choke pun and Jyn's constant Braveheart speeches (the hope speech in the middle made me want to slash my ears off with a butter knife). Like I said, just...awful.
And then, out of nowhere, the movie simply stops sucking. It's almost like an entirely different director came in, fired the entire production crew out of a canon and delivered to us a long, fun, thrilling planetary battle that simply blew me away. The space elements are exciting, with a great sense of scale, the music is epic and appropriate, the ground battle is suitably gritty and, most importantly, the movie starts realizing all of my fantasies regarding the ultimate destiny of our drab, dishwater crew. By the time Darth Vader makes his entrance and starts dominating everybody with his sour cherry glow-stick, I was close to ready to forgive the movie all its flaws.
Close, but not quite. All my friends I saw Rogue One with last night agree that the movie is an unholy mess. Ultimately fun and worth your time (to a point), but if you want to see it, do yourself a favor - take a long bath, wash your hair, catch up on Westworld, have a nice meal and walk slowly to the theater, thus making sure you'll come only for the last 40 minutes of the movie. I promise that you'll have a much better time of it then.
2.5/5 stars
