It's been 30 years.

I haven't gone out of my way to avoid it, but I never quite found the time to watch it, either. Mostly, I haven't thought about it at all. But, well, it's been 30 years. Tomorrow, in fact, it will have been exactly 30 years since it first lit up the silver screen.

Time to see Star Wars.

So I did.

I watched it with a friend, a veteran of many viewings. She knew I wanted to approach this with fresh eyes and an open mind, so she was careful to keep her opinions to herself. Still, I knew where she stood. The fact that she owned the DVD told me what she thought of the movie. Every now and then as we watched, when I’d turn to her with a bemused expression, she'd simply smile and say nothing.

A pity that Princess Leia didn't show my friend's restraint. Geez Louise, what a harpy.

To say I went into the movie clueless, though, wouldn't be accurate. You can't have lived in this world for as long as I have without being exposed to some of the fallout from this pop-culture phenomenon. Just like you can't avoid being exposed to radiation from time to time.

So, you can kind of see where this is going. First, though, let me tell you what I liked:

I liked Alec Guinness. He could make the reading of a grocery list entertaining. Come to think of it, he almost did that here.

The music. A good musical score can work wonders, conjuring emotions that would otherwise be absent in the film. John Williams earned his Oscar here.

And the special effects were pretty good for their time, weren’t they? Actually, they still hold up. And I know that’s very important to a movie-going culture that values pyrotechnics over plot and character and good writing.

Speaking of which …

It was a movie made a long time ago, in a galaxy apparently lacking even one competent screenwriter. I’ve heard dialog that clanked before, but I haven’t seen writing this lame since Deep Throat (another flick with some pretty good special effects).

No wonder Guinness bailed out after the first movie. When you’ve played Col. Nicholson in Bridge on the River Kwai and Prince Feisal in Lawrence of Arabia, donning the threadbare cosset of a washed-up Jedi knight and swapping sophmoric banalities with third-rate actors must have been a severe shock to the system.

Sometimes, no paycheck is big enough.

OK, I promised myself not to judge this movie as high art. Clearly it wasn't intended to be that. As a couple of hours of mindless entertainment, it's ... harmless. But to have burrowed itself so deeply into the American cultural consciousness? That bothers me. Are we really the simpletons H.L. Mencken said we were? (Rhetorical question.)

Here was my takeaway from Star Wars:

· Uncouth, venal, wisecracking Americans exist in every corner of the universe. For reasons that escape me, they’re tolerated wherever they go.

· Jewish princesses seem to travel well, too. In this case, she really was a princess.

· Even when he’s spewing bile, James Earl Jones has a great voice.

· It’s possible to go from being a whiny, spoiled, self-involved teenager to a crack fighter pilot capable of taking down the Death Star with absolutely no training whatsoever. I know, I know … it was in the kid’s genes.

· Big fat guys who look like bikers can cut it in the Rebel air force.

· There are bars in San Francisco with more interesting characters.

· Nice try on the quasi-SS uniforms worn by the Empire guys. The Nazis had better tailors, though.

· Bad writing is bad writing, and bad acting is bad acting. And ever the twain shall meet. At least in Hollywood.

· No matter how great an actor Alec Guinness was, he couldn’t have saved this picture. No one could have.

· Annie Hall was the deserving recipient of best picture for 1977.

· George Lucas' best movie? American Graffiti.

· As I said up top, I can understand the pop culture ripple effect from this movie. I will never understand the flood.

· I should have waited for the 50th anniversary.

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Tony Long is copy chief at Wired News.

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