Movie for the afternoon

The Clowns movie. Yes, thanks to a pair of free passes that Chris had I got a chance to watch the blockbuster (arguably) of the summer. The good things: never a dull moment (although the C3PO humour bits are very uncomfortable, except for the "I'm beside myself" pun), good special effects (although some of the designs and models couldn't hide their artificial/CG origins, especially in scenes that betrayed an obvious symmetry in the replicated objects -- perpendicular and uniformly crossing lines of traffic), nice (yet potentially unsatisfying) score from the dependable John Williams (I loved the insertion of the Death Star/Darth Vader theme at the point where Anakin talks of becoming all powerful). The most obvious parallel to the second episode of the original trilogy is in the loss of the right hand:Anakin loses his right arm in the struggle with Count Dokoo while in The Empire Strikes Back, Luke Skywalker loses his in a duel with his father. Why do I think John Williams is unsatisfying? Well, I don't remember the score for the original trilogy as clearly as I would like to but Williams seems to merely re-explore the original canvas (although there's a nice little theme, possibly for the two lovers, which appealed to me, but I, for the world, cannot recall its cues) here. This gives us a score that assures us of his capabilities, but does not astound us with anything new. The score is thus appropriate, but not exploratory.