At last, Episode VII

Wait 10 years for a new Star Wars film. The cinema advises us to turn our phones off, which I dutifully do so. I'm reading in the quiet, "A long time ag..." Ping-ping ping-ping, ping-ping ping-ping goes off someone's mobile phone in the row behind me! They obviously hope the caller will ring off as they do nothing about it. I turn round and say "Shut the f**k up!" which I feel perfectly entitled to do under the circumstances, prompting them to finally get the phone out of their pocket and reject the caller. At this point, we're a paragraph into the 'road' sequence. Apart from that, good movie.

It is essentially a splicing together of Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope and The Return of the Jedi two 'episodes' later, with new characters filling old roles and old characters filling older ones.  It remains to be seen how many times they can blow up a big planet-thingy and still keep the crowds returning (it just failed to beat the box office record for the opening week) - interestingly, Lawrence Kasdan who co-wrote the Return of the Jedi is on hand here.  The five minute coda is also a misstep - The Empire Strikes Back didn't need Han Solo to be found before the thrilling credits music. 

But the pleasure here is seeing a homage-laden tribute to the original trilogy and the action does go at a lickety-split, with plenty of humorous moments thrown in.  It is the spirit of the original trilogy retooled for the 21st century, putting behind us the rather po-faced prequel trilogy.  It is never less than pleasurable.  Four out of Five.