To care or to sleep?

Rating: 4/10 (16 May 2002)

I cannot believe how bad this movie was... First lets get the discussion of the visual effects out of the way. Of course, they were stunning. It's George Lucas, after all. And if visual effects are all you care about you'll enjoy this film.
But the love story, which takes up the majority of the plot, was so stale and dull be aware that you might fall asleep in your cushy theatre seat. All of the actors, especially Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen, were extremely stiff, which is to be expected, what with the cheesy and archaic dialogue. But, even so, I expected better performances from these two. Natalie has definitely proven that she is capable of turning in a marvelous performance (i.e., Leon) and Hayden was nominated for a Golden Globe for Life As a House. Why then were these two so terrible at convincing us that we should care about their characters' supposed "love" for one another?
I found myself staring at the screen thinking, "NO. These can't possibly be the future parents of Luke and Leia. I'm suppose to believe that two cold fish could have produced such lively and intelligent children?"
Episode II has really confirmed my belief that George Lucas, as talented as he is with visual effects, should not direct. Leave it to someone else, please! And for the third film would it be too much to ask that Natalie be given some sort of intelligent senatorial speech? This way we can all believe that she is someone worthy of Jedi protection. (And perhaps Hayden's dialogue should be kept to a minimum next time.)
Final Comment: You know a film is bad when the best performance comes from Yoda, a little digitally created green guy.