My wife and I fed the Monster of Skywalker Ranch and saw Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. I did have an appropriate Big Dogs T-shirt, “Dog Wars: Revenge of the Sniff,” but we were going to a nice restaurant before the movie.

(no real spoilers here beyond what you’ve seen in marketing)

I pretty much agree with what most reviews that say the romantic dialogue got in the way, that George Lucas’s supposed swipe at Bush, if intentional, was lame, that Yoda quit much too early in his battle with Palpatine, and that the assembly of Darth Vader was generally very cool except for a pretty weak scream.

What I have heard nobody talk about is the music. One of the better things about The Phantom Menace, the soundtrack was wonderful yet didn’t get in the way, and I bought the TPM soundtrack within weeks of seeing it. Hours after watching ROTS, I bought the soundtrack to it. I have no plans to buy the Attack of the Clones soundtrack; I didn’t believe it was that good.

Nobody questions John Williams’s genius in the compositions of the original trilogy. Yet in TPM and now ROTS, in the funeral music of good characters (Qui-Gon Jinn and Padmé Amidala), the composer’s new music sounds like he borrows some musical color from his work in Schindler’s List. The music in that movie brought tears to everyone in the movie house, and if the music in Revenge of the Sith causes you to think you’re suffering allergies at times, don’t be surprised.

If you’ve seen the other movies and are trying to decide whether to go, here’s a tip: you know fairly well what has to happen, and it does. Go for the music, especially in the latter half of the movie.

Update: May 22nd, 10:08pm: Michael Schuermann has a musical critique of ROTS with good information at Poor Michael’s Almanac. He “is not as forgiving as I am”.