Even more disappointing than Episode I

Rating: 1/10 (16 May 2002)

Attack of the Clones is a joke, in every respect. From a film standpoint, it is pathetic. The cinematography and editing are poor, and the acting is no better. From a story standpoint, it is muddled at best, and excruciatingly scattered at worst. As opposed to focusing on the interaction between a few main characters in the film, Attack of the Clones instead blazes through a large number of meaningless character interaction. The only sustained interaction is between Padme and Anakin Skywalker, and even this is campy, uninteresting, and aggravating. Characters do and say things for no apparant reason.
The film doesn't have a single ounce of subtletly, George Lucas seems to make it a point to have his film proceed in an all-too-cartoon-like fashion where nothing is left to be analyzed by the audience. On numerous occasions where he could have just left something in the background, only to be shortly glipsed at, he instead chooses to pound it dead-center into the audience's view.
As far as the Star Wars tradition goes, Attack of the Clones is incredibly insulting to the original three films. It is shiny, and chock full of shiny computer graphics, but it turns the original trilogy into a big joke. The Jedi Knights, once described as prescient wizards, are reduced to mere special forces units with lightsabers, wading into battle with thousands of robots in ridiculous, very un-Jedi fashion. The characters are incredibly poorly developed and one-dimensional, and one of the main bad characters isn't even introduced, he's just suddenly in the film.
Don't go see Attack of the Clones in the theaters. Don't rent it on video. Don't even waste your time reading any other reviews of it. George Lucas seems hell-bent on destroying Star Wars, and any true fan of the original trilogy will absolutely hate this movie.