Epic Filmmaking At Its Most Mundane!

Rating: Null/10 (20 December 2015)

The fifth instalment in the Star Wars saga and the second chapter in Lucas' prequel trilogy, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones has all the ingredients that made The Phantom Menace such a repugnant piece of sh*t and while it offers no improvement over its pathetic dialogues, wooden characters, lacklustre performances & lame attempts at humour, it does manage to be minutely less unbearable than its predecessor.
Set 10 years after the events of The Phantom Menace in a galaxy far, far away, Attack of the Clones finds the galaxy on the brink of a civil war and follows Anakin Skywalker who's now put in charge of taking care of the Senator he happens to have a crush on, while his mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi, is assigned to investigate the assassination attempt made on the Senator, the inquiry of which leads him to discover a secret clone army for the Republic.
Co-written & directed by George Lucas, Attack of the Clones continues his fascination with digital effects while adding more dumb-looking & useless characters to populate his space opera. His direction ups the action aspect a little, which is a welcome change, but there is still no emphasis on plot or character development. There at least seems to be some sense of direction however when it comes to where this story is headed but it doesn't amount to much in the end.
The set pieces & poorly-rendered creatures still don't contribute to the story in any way and their presence only made everything unintentionally funny, even if it isn't really meant to be. The screenplay is an absolute mess for the little improvement in storytelling is only negated by the dumbest dialogues you can hear in a motion picture. The action scenes are larger in scale but it all looks terribly dated now. Editing is poor again and its 142 minutes of runtime is unnecessarily stretched for no reason whatsoever.
The visual effects, sound design & digital cinematography may have added new stuff in the world of filmmaking back then but all of that still can't make up for what the picture lacks in the basic storytelling section. The story is definitely overlong, the pacing is stagnant for the most part, the darker elements are introduced but not played with, the characters remain as dumb as before, there is more action than the previous episode but it's mostly dull & boring and even the climactic lightsaber duel fails to evoke any sort of excitement.
Coming to the performances, the cast of Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Frank Oz & others reprise their given roles while Hayden Christensen & Christopher Lee are new additions. The characters are still bland, thus giving these actors nothing to work with. Christensen plays Anakin Skywalker and his performance is probably the worst of them all. Lee is in as this episode's antagonist but even his input is mediocre. As far as its reprising cast is concerned, there's still no noticeable improvement from any.
On an overall scale, Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones is as miserable an entry as The Phantom Menace was, but its narrative exhibits a bit more focus on where this prequel trilogy is supposed to be heading. Even though it didn't have to endure the crazy hype that its predecessor was subjected to, the movie fails to take advantage of the severely lowered expectations and delivers a film experience that's very much on the same level of dullness & absurdity. Another forgettable, inexcusable & spiritless entry in Star Wars prequel trilogy, Attack of the Clones is epic filmmaking at its most mundane.