Keira Knightley: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

And 5 That Sucked...

5. Sabé - Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)

This might seem a trifle unfair or spiteful on my part, considering my past remarks about Star Wars both here and in my reviews on Mumby at the Movies. Knightley doesn't feature in my article on actors who couldn't let Star Wars go, because she quite clearly has gone on to a lot of better things. Being in The Phantom Menace may not be a crime in and of itself, but being bad in a really bad film does deserve to be reprimanded. The plot of The Phantom Menace (what there is of it) has been described, dissected and joked about in such detail that repeating it here seems altogether pointless. Suffice to say, Sabé is one of the handmaidens to Queen Amidala (Natalie Portman), who accompanies her and the Jedi on their journey to Coruscant to address the Trade Federation. It eventually transpires that Sabé has often served as the Queen's body double to protect her; Knightley was cast on the basis of her physical resemblance to Portman. You might have good cause for arguing that this performance isn't the actor's fault, as could be said for anyone who has worked under George Lucas. But even with such a simple job, Knightley doesn't do enough to convince us that she and Portman are the same person. The fact that her dialogue had to be overdubbed by Portman proves that she couldn't carry off the façade on her own, and even then the dubbing is so bad that it only draws attention to it. Though it grieves me to say it, this is one occasion when it might have worked better if Lucas had simply used CGI, cloning Portman and thereby carrying off the deception.