“No. Search not. Inspiration will you not find. It will find you.”

Justin’s rating: Still the best Star Wars movie from 1999.

Justin’s review: There was a heckuva lot of hoopla when George Lucas in Love originally came out. Critics raved, this short film apparently sold more copies on Amazon.com than The Phantom Menace, and the stars heralded its arrival as the catalyst for Y2K. My instinct was to skip it because Phantom Menace was so bad that I declared my home a Star Wars-free zone for a full year and the title “George Lucas In Love” reminded me of an Oscar-winning movie I shan’t mention here that had me bazooka-barfing after my first viewing.

So, yes, my therapist has been getting me to face my fears (I think she’s just bored with me and hoping I’ll leap off a cliff or something), and I finally got a chance to view this flick.

Surprisingly, George Lucas in Love is a great ode to Star Wars fandom. In much the same way that Free Enterprise was riddled with sly in-jokes to science fiction greats that both dedicated fans and newcomers could appreciate, this short movie is packed with references to the Holy Trilogy that will have Wookiees (from Endor) leaping up and down in gleeful rapture. It’s a trip that almost makes Jar-Jar worth it.

The story goes something like this: George Lucas, an aspiring filmmaker, is in college in the 1960s hacking away at an unsuccessful sci-fi script. Little does he know that inspiration surrounds him every day.

Ultimately, it takes the female wiles of a particular bun-haired girl to get him to see it. When everything clicks, suddenly his friends and associates at college become the infamous characters we’ve come to know and quote. There’s a college professor that can’t quite speak proper English, a hallmate who wears black and uses an asthma inhaler, and, well, I can’t spoil the rest. Be content to know that it’d be worth your time to get a glimpse of this short, particularly for the great ending.

So the question is, where’s the fan film that shows how the Mutant Reviewers first came to be? Someone get on that, and make sure you get permission from the Canadian government for the use of excessive fireworks over Manitoba!