I can still remember the sensation of sitting in the theater at twelve years old, rife with anticipation yet blissfully uncertain of what wonders of pure imagination were coming my way. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…. That opening explanatory scrawl and the John William’s fanfare building to crescendo and then suddenly falling away like breaking glass, leaving us suspended in the void of space. The camera dropping upon an interstellar view of horizons unknown, allowing no more than an instant to take in the majesty, when suddenly a spaceship hurrying toward the surface disrupts the scene. I am hooked. Bolts of colored light, red then green are exchanged in swift flashes across the big screen when into view comes another craft, triangular and ever growing. It is enormous, filling the screen, obscuring even the planets below and it keeps coming and coming and coming. Just like the sequels.

Following on the heels of the dismal Rogue One, I could muster little enthusiasm for the latest lazy entry to jettison itself like so much space junk into the infinite black depths of the once bright and glimmering Star Wars universe. As a former enthusiast of the series, I knew our trajectories would eventually cross and I would inevitably relent and see it, either on big screen or small. I decided to face it head on over the holiday break and so with daughter in tow, we slunk off like womp rats in beggars canyon to feed on the twin sun baked carcass of this once fresh and entertaining franchise. Having set the bar so low, I held out hope that I might be pleasantly surprised by the movie. I had seen that The New York Times had liked it and Rolling Stone had compared it to The Empire Strikes Back and gave it three and a half stars. I read neither review, so little was my interest.

I am accustomed to new movies in general being nothing more than a Frankenstein’s creation of rehashed ideas, tossed in the hopper, tumbled and stitched into vaguely familiar or blatantly mimicked monster versions of their purer predecessors. I’ve been gamed enough by the comic superhero redundancies. I’ve given more than my share of Star Wars bucks to Lucas and Disney for lackluster return; we all have. But this is what thrives, this is what sells seats, while stunning sci-fi cinema like Blade Runner 2049 languishes and fades to black. Still, you’ve got to give the people what they want, keep that Bantha fodder coming Hollywood, we’ll keep lapping it up until someday when the Jedi mind trick finally wears off and we can see more clearly how we are being snookered.

Watching Star Wars: the Last Jedi was as frustrating as trying to comb gum out of a Wookie’s hair. It was as irritating as listening to Jar-Jar Binks recite The Gettysburg Address. It was as painful as trying to pass a cast iron Tie-Fighter in a Mos-Eisley port-a-potty. Longer than Bib Fortuna’s cranial cornucopia and blacker than a Sarlacc’s esophagus it was an exercise in mundane masochism. It was cynical, silly and obvious. Give me a parsec to gather my thoughts and I will try to bring you up to light speed on what makes this compactor dreck so dreadful.

Straight out of the gate, young Hollywood marks every obligatory box on the millennial fanboy checklist by assuring the audience that heroes come in every color and gender while villains are generally pasty old white guys with absurdly contrived faux Shakespearean accents incapable of uttering much beyond their oft repeated catchphrase, “You rebel scum.” I don’t mind being clobbered with that hammer and I recognize the necessity but maybe it could have been presented as a public service announcement in the trailers rather than an actual plot device in the movie.

Beyond that, the first problem is Luke. Bleary, dreary and weary, the once bright-eyed, foremost hero of the rebellion is a self-loathing hermit living on an isolated island hideaway somewhere in “Space Ireland.” He shares the island with an order of Carmelite horned toad, brick mason nuns and a litter of simpering, overly sensitive Rock Cornish game hens. After absent-mindedly parking his X-wing starfighter at low tide, he is apparently resigned to spend his days getting drunk on the tit milk of depressed slacker walruses and pole dance fishing for dinner. Which I assume he grills open air with a little rosemary and tarragon on that kick ass fire pit that looks as if it were designed by Chip and Joanna Gaines. It occurred to me that a Jedi of his power might more easily use the force to simply will the fish out of the water and into the frying pan but maybe he needs the exercise.

The next problem is Leia, who appears frequently, always looking bored out of her skull and put upon. Poor dear Carrie’s ravaged voice leaves Leia sounding alternately like Admiral Akbar choking on fish flakes or Walter Brennan with his dentures out. She can fly like Christopher Reeve through the icy vacuum of space only to collapse inexplicably when reaching the warm and cozy confines of a space cruiser. Perhaps it was naptime.

Supreme Commander Snoke (who is this guy anyway?) looks strikingly like Bing Crosby in a circa ’76 Minute Maid commercial, replete with Palm Springs golf course sun damage. He has high hopes for Kylo Ren but treats him more like Gary Crosby. Snoke rules from a throne room that looks straight out of Star Trek or maybe Lost in Space on a budget freeze; still it is good to see the set and costume designers from the 1980 epic Flash Gordon getting the much-needed work after such a dry spell.

Daisy Ridley is a lovely and welcome presence on the screen and the good news is she shows up often and unexpectedly. How did she end up on the Falcon? Oh, well who cares, as I said she is welcome. Burdened with the unenviable task of trying to get pickled, petulant Skywalker up off his ass to do anything, she and the other young actors are the only hope for a promising Star Wars future, provided they can wrest control from the muddled and befuddled Rian Johnson. As it stands she spends most of her time nagging Luke and chitchatting with her boyfriend Kylo who looks and acts like the fourth hockey Hanson brother. They carry on their long distance romance through the telepathic contrivance of the laziest, least convincing special effects interaction since identical cousins Cathy and Patty Lane cooked up a new scheme together on the Patty Duke Show. In a rare moment when she is not breaking up with Ben, Rey finds time to go spelunking for answers in the island’s evil anus where we learn absolutely nothing beyond how fun 1930’s carnival mirror technology can be. Upon crawling out of the odious orifice she as much as acknowledges the pointlessness of the scene saying, “I didn’t learn jackshit down there!” or something to that effect. Kylo and Ren finally do hook up in the flesh, just long enough to leave you wondering why the two most powerful Jedis ever birthed have to labor through a prolonged ninja battle with Snoke’s Bob Mackie gowned crimson guard. The force is with you dammit, use it!

Along the way, as we hurl through this asteroid field of a film, we are graced with numerous jarring cameos from real-life Hollywood celebrities, completely ignoring the lesson from the first trilogy of how beneficial it was to take an unknown cast (Billy Dee Williams aside) and let them develop as the story unfolds. Laura Dern shows up as…wait for it…an admiral of the resistance! Looking like every stoner junior high girl whoever dyed her hair with grape Kool-Aid, how no one thought to put a roach clip in her hair and clothe her in an acid-washed denim cloak, I’ll never know. She stands around wide-eyed, dim-witted and gawking led by the hand by her CGI girlfriend. The computer resurrected Peter Cushing and young Carrie Fischer were so disturbingly creepy in The Force Awakens that I was shocked to see them take another stab at it. Why they chose to breath computer contrived plastic life into the random person of long dead character actress Mildred Natwick as Commander D’Acy, I’ll never know.

Alien Linda Hunt is back again using her pseudonym Maz Kanata. She shows up in hologram form long enough to boast, in the middle of a running gun battle no less, of her sexual satisfaction at the hand’s of Jennifer Anniston’s husband, looking like a smarmier George Hamilton. Benicio Del Toro shows up too, talking about his g, g, g, generation, in the most unwelcome guest appearance since Forest Whitaker wheezed his way through a few scenes of Rogue One, no wait, since Laura Dern! Billie Lourd occasionally pops up doing nothing but looking like a dopier Debbie Reynolds and even a lizard version of the Monopoly Millionaire gets some screen time.

The big climactic scene features a showdown between Luke, apparently still too disinterested to actually pull himself off his Skull Island La-Z-Boy perch, and Kylo Ren. You’ve seen a big Star Wars battle scene before so I don’t really have to describe it, do I? Yes, the Millennium Falcon shows up to the rescue in the most desperate of moments. Yes, many rebel pilots are sacrificed as evidenced in the ongoing and infinite Porkins variations. Yes, the stage is set for another sequel. Yes, yes, yes. This time around, our ever-diminishing band of heroes are aided in their salvation by something called crystal critters who look like the only Christmas ornaments still left on the clearance rack at Home Goods in February.

Before finally reaching the merciful end, a few bones are tossed to the past with appearances from R2-D2 briefly trying to rouse Master Luke before throwing in the towel, C-3PO relegated to his usual annoying banter, Chewbacca defying the laws of natural selection and Master Yoda making a brief appearance as a maniacal arsonist. We also get to enjoy a few sardonic hipster quips from various characters. You know the kind of cute and gimmicky ‘now’ language that effectively rips you straight out of your movie seat escapism alternate galaxy and back to the familiar profane parlance of your Snapchat feed. At one point Poe refers to a “big ass door”, when I think what he meant to say was “big ass bore.”

The good news is that while the old guard rusts and withers, the rebellion is safe in the hands of the orphan kids casts of Annie and Oliver and their giant NeverEnding Story horse puppies. The movie ends on a Sorcerers Apprentice magic broomstick note, with a particularly Mickey Gubitosi looking waif staring hopefully, off into the depths of space. I had the sinking feeling he was going to look into the camera and say, “Please Sir, may I have some more?” in regards to the inevitable next round of sequels at which point I would have grabbed a lightsaber and hewn him in half myself.

As the end credits rolled, I sat in the dark wishing for the virginity of my humanity back. Star Wars: The Last Jedi is worse than every worst movie I have ever seen combined, including: Roller Boogie, The Truth About Cats And Dogs, Peter’s Friends and High Spirits. I don’t know why I expected more from a franchise that hasn’t been on track since our heroes landed on Endor way back in 1983 but I did. Maybe in Rey and Finn and Poe and Rose there can be a new hope but what I once knew and loved of the old Star Wars is goner than Alderaan