This latest Star Wars has the same basic effect as the other three: the sense that it was made not only for children but for the belief in many adults that they are still kids at heart.
During the summers of 1977 and 1978, reviewers for the slicker film journals, the national news-weeklies, and the urban dailies prostrated themselves apotheosizing Star Wars as mindless entertainment. In the summer of 1980, the same reviewers intoned a rather different chorus in paean to The Empire Strikes Back.
Some of the trick effects might seem miraculous if the imagery had any lustre, but Return of the Jedi is an impersonal and rather junky piece of moviemaking.