He's a lop-eared, platypus-billed, bug-eyed klutz in matching vest and bell bottoms who walks like he's stepped in gum and is talking his way into unexpected trouble.
With his Caribbean patois and scrambled syntax, he's being called everything from a Rastafarian frog to an extraterrestrial Stepin Fetchit. He's also being called the action figure you're most likely to step on in your kid's bedroom this summer.Say heyo-dalee to Jar Jar Binks, the Gungan outcast from the planet Naboo. He's stirring some of the strongest reactions to "Stars Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace."
"The movie would be vastly improved if Jar Jar wasn't in it," says Jeremy Mueller, 23, a Seattle comics store clerk whose International Society for the Extermination of Jar Jar Binks Web site attracted more than 300 members in less than a week.
Ahmed Best, the South Bronx-born actor who came up with the movements and voice of the digitally realized amphibian, imagined he'd be the fave of the Junior Jedi set. He didn't expect to hear words like "insulting" or "racist" from critics who found Jar Jar a throwback to portrayals of blacks as buffoons.
"People who are reacting like that, I think they really have to do some soul-searching and discover the prejudices that they have," Best said by cell phone from near his Brooklyn home.
"I saw an innocence in the character. I saw the honesty of the character. I saw the awkward kid who just didn't fit in. I was definitely the kid who didn't fit in. That's why I identified with the character."
Best was a lead performer in the San Francisco company of the dance-theater production "Stomp" when Robin Gurland, casting director for the "Star Wars" prequel, spotted him onstage.
The 25-year-old, who had never been in a feature film, initially signed on only to model Jar Jar's rubber-limbed movements. But he wound up creating the creature's voice by tapping into his lifelong love of cartoons.
When Best read for the part, George Lucas' script seemed riddled with typos.
"Ello boyos," Jar Jar says, greeting a row of droids. "Disa wanna longo trip, hey?
Other Jar Jarisms: "ex-squeezee-me," "wesa dyin' here" and the hip-hop-injected "woah, yousa guys bombad!" -- one of the lines the Jar Jar action figure spouts.
In the Lucasfilms book "Star Wars: The Making of Episode I," Gurland says she was looking for a bumbling type of actor, someone high-energy, comedic and improvisational. When she saw Best in "Stomp," moving his arms with a kitchen sink around his neck, she thought, "He's Jar Jar."
"Originally we wanted Ahmed because he was so good at using his body," Lucas says in the book. "But then I had him do the dialogue, and I liked what he did there as well. As soon as we started shooting, it became obvious that he believed in his lines and in his character. He found the meaning behind the character."
Best was on the set more than any other player, standing in for his computer-generated character during scenes with other actors. He wore the heavy latex, plastic and foam suit and a hat that resem- bled Jar Jar's head. It added a few necessary inches to Best's 6-foot-3 frame.
Best says Lucas acknowledged that Jar Jar was the riskiest character. "George told me that we were really going out on a limb," he says in the book. "C-3P0 was funny, but in a very formal dry way. And Chewbacca got some laughs, but he was basically just a big bouncer for the Millennium Falcon. Jar Jar was the first outright comic character."
Best was speaking five days before the film's release. He had just read David Ansen's review in Newsweek, the one that likened Jar Jar to Fetchit, the black actor whose obsequious, childish portrayals in the '20s and '30s became an embarrassment to subsequent generations of African-Americans.
Ansen's remark was echoed in other publications including the Toronto Sun, where Peter Howell described Jar Jar's sometimes unintelligible banter as "demeaning pidgin English that will give many older viewers an unfortunate reminder of Hollywood's more blatant racial stereotypes."
"That was a bit upsetting," Best said. "By saying something like that, they're proving they haven't evolved enough to realize that a completely fictitious character can come about from creative people."
He took a breath and continued.
"Jar Jar is not an African, not an African-American. He's a reptile from the planet Naboo. If people don't understand that, they're going too far. The movie is fun. It's not a portrayal of America. If you're looking for that in 'Star Wars,' then you really have to get out more."
Best has said that he doesn't know if Jar Jar will be back for the next two episodes. He paused a beat, then added: "Oh yeah, I do."
But he's sworn to secrecy, as he has been from the start. It's a challenge, keeping mum about a subject millions of fans are bursting to know about. But the Lucas people are good at keeping the lid on their creatures.
"In the back of my mind," Best says, "is the fact that they could sue me."