This sort of thing is happening more and more to me lately: After a few minutes of banter about whatever else is going on in our lives, conversations always turn (in the company of people my age) to Star Wars.

We can't stop it.

And even though I think about staying out of it, I get sucked in too. I want to share my feelings (stretch out with them, perhaps) and debate impossibly detailed aspects of the new and old movies until we've exhausted our pop culture patience and once again turn the talking to something more benign.

And the most obvious point is that we're all gonna go see it again. Soon. Maybe this week (a matinee?) or next week, but it doesn't matter. We're gonna see it again a few times this summer. We're caught in a loop.

I don't know who to blame for this. I can't say it's George's fault. We were the ones who wanted to see his first set of movies over and over and over again when we were young. We weren't forced, it was an act of love.

And it's the same with the new movie--even if the experience is so totally different than it was the first time around. We're not wide-eyed and naive five year olds who need help from dad to read the scrolling opening synopsis. We're over twenty years older and should know better.

And, to be completely honest, I thought I was gonna hate Jar Jar Binks. I saw this floppy-eared rabbit thing flapping a lame tongue around (all I saw of him was in the previews and that 60 Minutes special, and there wasn't a ton of specific footage), and I was thinking--yeah, what the world needs now is another Roger Rabbit.

But he wasn't that bad, and by the end of the flick, I actually liked the guy. I was turned around. Except for a couple of ill-timed bits of comic relief (usually there's a silence as we're supposed to take in some kind of info about the Force and Jar Jar would drop something), he wasn't that grating at all.

Of course, by the time I'd seen the flick, I'd heard the crap. Racial stereotypes, teaching our kids the wrong values, guns in school, blah blah blah. Or blar blar blar.

I've met a few people from Jamaica in my lifetime and none of them spoke like Jar Jar. It didn't even cross my mind that this was a mimic of that type of language. So one has to wonder--what kind of stereotype does a person have in their mind in the first place if they think this is racist.

And what about the first movies? All of the Empire spoke in the Queen's English while most of the Rebellion spoke in American--sort of. Was that a bad English stereotype to cast them as the force of evil in the universe?

I liked the movie, though. And, I guess, the people who have problems with it didn't. So this leaves me in a quandary.

Do critics go into films with the intention of finding everything wrong before they find anything right? Or am I just oblivious to stuff like this?

I don't think I'm that oblivious.

I hated Forrest Gump. It wasn't really because I thought it was a badly made movie, I thought it's theme--moron blissfully wanders through life and everything good gets dumped in his lap accidentally--was just a bit insulting to anyone with an IQ over 100. And the whole "women must die for their children while the man is more heroic for surviving the mess" kind of put me off, too.

And here's something I don't understand. If Robin Wright's character (Forrest's only love) dies of AIDS and Forrest was her kid's dad, why wasn't Forrest or the kid infected with AIDS? Miracle of screenplay holes, I guess.

I should qualify all of this because I thought Pulp Fiction was a better movie that year, and I saw Pulp before Gump. So I guess I was biased. But I'm a fan of Tom Hanks--I can't believe he's come so far from Bachelor Party. So I was half-biased.

So is that it? If there's something we don't like, it's okay to trash it. And if we do like something we try to defend it ad nauseam until we get painted, along with the movie, as something we're not?

Maybe. But I know one thing.

I'm gonna see the damn movie again. And again, I think, too.

Matt Worley usually doesn't get caught up in all the hype, but his Star Wars immunity has always been dangerously low for a sane person.