The Whatever of the Something

Rating: 2/10 (22 October 2012)

Ten years have passed story wise between "Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace" and "Episode 2 – Attack of the Clones". Anakin Skywalker is now somewhat successfully undergoing education at the Jedi Academy with Obi-Wan Kenobi as his mentor and master. Ten years have also passed since Anakin met Padmé Amidala the last time, and a while after they meet again they start to develop feelings for each other.
Hold onAnakin and Padmé? If Anakin was supposed to be about ten years old in Episode 1, and Padmé at least sixteen given she was participating in battles waving a blaster around, and also looking very woman-like, that means that there's an age difference by a minimum of six years between the two. Neither one of them must've considered this to be a problem, which actually is kind of contradictory to Padmé's early on confession in this movie that she still views Anakin as a kid. I guess her feeling alone eventually made her forget all about that stuff. Another fact that points to this is that she falls for the guy in the first place. Anakin is portrayed as a completely unsympathetic, self- centered, obnoxious douche bag, and Padmé's feelings of loneliness must've been unbearable in order for her to engage in a relationship with him. Either that or she's just plain stupid. Because they are having a relationship, the dialogue tells us so, even though it's a relationship very detached from how love usually works in real life, and despite the total lack of chemistry between the characters as well as the actors (Portman and Christensen). Fact is, if the situation hadn't been explained to us in words and shown to us in embarrassingly bad "love scenes", Anakin and Padmé would've just come off as two very incompatible persons, one of which has got severe social difficulties.
The reason I'm going on about this love thing is because it's THE THEME OF THE MOVIE, but it's so badly executed it just doesn't hold any water, and thereby making the film collapse in on itself. It's poorly written, it's poorly directed, and the actors with any actual acting skills try their best to hold it together. Natalie Portman does under the circumstances a pretty good job. Hayden Christensen on the other hand is awful to the extent he should consider a career outside the movie industry.
Furthermore I believe Anakin's alleged melancholy to be incredibly forced, and the only explanation we get to his mental health problems is that he misses his mother. To me, that doesn't seem like a valid reason for being a total jerk. Is this mother business that much of a problem anyway? I mean, couldn't the Jedi council sometime over the past ten years have dispatched a couple of Jedi knights to bring Schmi Skywalker to Coruscant with them? I doubt that would've been very difficult.
There's also the part of the movie where Obi-Wan Kenobi investigates the whereabouts of a supposed clone army. In addition, there's for some reason an assassination attempt on Padmé connected to the bounty hunter Jango Fett, who in his turn is connected to the clones somehow. Much like in "The Phantom Menace", it's difficult to understand what really transpires, what people are doing and why. Once again things are illogical and people irrational, but even more so this time around. Once again I'm having trouble to account for the story, and ultimately I don't care about the not-so-much-of-a-secret of the clones, the forced fake love between Anakin and Padmé, or the pretty much uninteresting war involving the Jedis and the whatever. For some reason George Lucas felt the need to tell us these things, but instead of seizing the opportunity to create something memorable he just shoves it straight down the garbage chute.