Via Ign.com:

Elstree 1976 is a very personal series of stories from people whose lives have been specially touched by Star Wars’ phenomenal popularity. Director Jon Spira delivers a sequence of intimate, melancholy, and candid interviews with the working actors who brought the Stormtroopers, bounty hunters, and bizarre cantina aliens to life.

If you saw these people on the street, you’d likely never recognize most of them. Many had their faces obscured by helmets, masks, or prosthetics. But they were privy to one of the great film-making experiences of a lifetime, and they have stories to tell. No history-shattering revelations or scandals come to light, but rather the simple, treasured memories of largely unknown talents who became part of something utterly unique. If you want to hear about the on-set friendship a bit-part actor formed with Mark Hamill, or the time someone accidentally ordered George Lucas to go fetch a coffee, you’re in the right place.

There’s very little interplay between the individual narratives, especially early on as we get to know the many players in Elstree’s quiet drama. The granular attention to so many different paths tends to make the first half of the movie a bit unfocused. Elstree might have benefited from a smaller pool of contributing voices, or from an edit that gave a more unified impression of the actors’ experiences.

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