I realize that the consensus view about Alexandre O. Philippe‘s The People vs. George Lucas is that it trashes a corrupted emperor who deserves it big-time but without uncovering anything new. And a doc that’s essentially driven by outrage over the three Star Wars prequels is way out-of-time in 2011.

Nonetheless The People vs. George Lucas is the second theatrical motion picture featuring MSN’s Glenn Kenny (i.e., as a talking head), it does open on 5.6 at Manhattan’s Cinema Village, and then at L.A.’s Nuart on 5.13.

I’ve been in the tank for this thing for no good cinematic reason (i.e., solely based on my negative feelings about Lucas) since ’09, and I realize it’s probably pointless to try and fan the flames (or embers) for a film that’s already been judged by most critics (i.e., excuding Chris Gore) to be an okay so-whatter. Update: A screener just arrived so I’ll see it tonight.

A little more than a year ago I wrote that regardless of quality “it may be worth it to see The People vs. George Lucas just to see it, even if it doesn’t quite make it.

“Just after The Phantom Menace opened — more than ten years ago! — I told David Poland in a phone coversation that Lucas was ‘the devil.’ Poland chortled, scoffed. “George Lucas is not the devil, Jeffrey,” he said. He most certainly is, I replied, in the sense that Albert Brooks called William Hurt ‘the devil in Broadcast News.

“Lucas is an embodiment of evil in that he destroyed his own Arthurian mythology and sacrificed the church of millions of Star Wars believers on the altar of egoistic revisionism and conservative commercialism and Jake Lloyd and Jar-Jar Binks action-figures. And now the world has caught up to my view.”