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In 1977, George Lucas' seminal sci-fi blockbuster Star Wars became a global phenomenon, spawning sequels and spin-offs and merchandise collectibles worth millions. But, based on this early review, not everyone expected it to become the giant hit it was.

Writing in New York magazine, film critic John Simon, not ever known for mincing his words, savaged Star Wars with a scathing review, calling Lucas' film "a set of giant baubles manipulated by an infant mind."

And it only gets worse/better from there. Here is a selection of the choice comments from his review:

I sincerely hope that science and scientists differ from science fiction and its practitioners. Heaven help us if they don't: We may be headed for a very boring world indeed. Strip Star Wars of its often striking images and its high-falutin scientific jargon, and you get a story, characters, and dialogue of overwhelming banality, without even a "future" cast to them. Human beings, anthropoids, or robots, you could probably find them all, more or less like, that, in downtown Los Angeles today...

O dull new world! We are treated to a galactic civil war, assorted heroes and villains, a princely maiden in distress, a splendid old man surviving from an extinct order of knights who possessed a mysterious power called "the Force," and it is all as exciting as last year's weather reports.... Why, even the most exciting fight is an old-fashioned duel, for all that the swords have laser beams for blades....

Here it is all trite characterization and paltry verbiage... The one exception is Alec Guinness as the grand old man Ben Kenobi (Ben for the Hebrew ben, to make him sound Biblical and good; Kenobi probably from cannibis, i.e., hashish, for reasons you can probably guess.)...

Still, Star Wars will do very nicely for those lucky enough to be children or unlucky enough never to have grown up.